


weight of living

by euriele



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-04-30
Packaged: 2018-01-21 09:50:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1546484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euriele/pseuds/euriele
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tucker helped him to let go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	weight of living

**Author's Note:**

> this is long and i applaud you for putting yourself through this

_“Journal entry… I don’t even remember what number I’m on now._

_“Everything’s been moving too fast these last few weeks. We escaped from the Federal Army’s base, but now were stranded in the middle of nowhere with no way of contacting the New Republic. Donut’s wound is getting worse and Sarge is ready to drop. Carolina went down with the Pelican, and I don’t know if she survived._

_“I’m losing hope at this point. Sarge and I are already prepared for the worst. Donut’s not doing good. We’ve done what we can to seal the wound, but he’s still losing blood. If we don’t do something soon, we’ll lose him._

_“I’m doing what I can to get us to the New Republic’s base. I stole a GPS from a soldier back when we were busted out, but the transmitter inside is broken, meaning we can’t send our location to the New Republic so that they can pick us up. We should be making thirty miles a day, but we barely make five. We’re running out of food and water and we probably have around five bullets between us. If we’re attacked, we’re fucked._

_“If I had known what I would be getting into ten years ago, I probably would’ve said no when I was reassigned. If I had known about Epsilon, about the Freelancers, the Director and the Meta and everything else I had to suffer through, I probably would’ve said ‘fuck you’ to those reassignment orders._

_“Then again… If I had been told about North and Connie, Carolina and York, South, Maine, Wyoming, Tex, the Reds, Caboose, Church and… and Tucker, I probably would’ve still said yes, because all that suffering is worth spending time with all of them._

_“But you don’t even know who they are. I guess… I guess I should start from the beginning.”_

 

_*_

 

He hadn’t expected the orders to come through. He hadn’t even known that he’d been entered into the program, or that he’d been accepted until his commanding officer was in the door of his room, informing him of his reassignment.

‘Project Freelancer’. A research program that only wanted the best of the best. David couldn’t help but feel a little honoured he’d been submitted for the program, but a sense of foreboding overcame him when he saw the word ‘research’. When he asked his CO what it meant by ‘research’, the guy could only shrug, which made David all the more suspicious and nervous.

It was a three hour flight from his base to the _Mother of Invention_ , the ship where Project Freelancer operated. David stood outside of his base with a bag on his back and his CO at his side, waiting for the transport ship to arrive. The other members of his team had already said goodbye and had retreated back to their posts. If anything, David guessed they were happy that he was leaving. He hadn’t been the most popular of the team.

The awkward silence between him and the CO stretched on for several minutes, and David found himself continuously checking his watch, shifting from foot to foot and begging for the ship to show up soon. His CO seemed to be uncomfortable as well, as he was whistling tunelessly and looking everywhere except at David.

When he couldn’t stand the silence anymore, he said, “So why did you submit me for this project anyway?”

The CO shrugged. “The email came through a few weeks ago, asking for applicants with exemplary records. You filled the requirements, so I submitted you.”

“Do you have any idea what kind of ‘research’ they’re doing on this project?”

“Not the slightest clue.”

David frowned and opened his mouth to speak again when his CO pointed at something in the distance. He squinted and sighed with relief when he saw the transport ship finally heading his way. He straightened himself out and smoothed his clothes before his CO grabbed his arm and span him around to face the older man.

For some reason, the CO was looking nervous. He looked from David to the fast approaching ship and back to David again.

“Listen, kid,” he said, “You were always the rookie around here. Yeah, you’re the best and you exceed expectations. You’re a great soldier. But the guys on this project are going to be just as good. In fact, they’ll be better than you. I don’t doubt that you’ll be the youngest. So keep your head down. Follow orders and stick to the rules like you always have, and keep your nose out of trouble.”

He had a million questions running through his head, but he never got a chance to ask them, as the CO retreated into the base and the ship landed at the other side of the small, dusty clearing. The sand and dust hit his eyes and seeped its way into his clothes. He’d made an effort to at least look decent, but the swirling dust and dirt coated him in an instant.

The engines of the ship cut off and the doors opened. A woman with flaming red hair stood in the doorway of the ship, waving him over.

“You David Washington?” she asked as jogged over.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. I’m Agent Carolina. Welcome to Project Freelancer, rookie.”

 

*

 

_“She looked like she could break your neck if you so much as breathed in a way she found offensive. And she was deadly. Carolina was the best of us all, despite what the leader board said. Tex may have been ahead of her in terms of points, but Carolina was so much better. More human, more approachable and… well, she was just better._

_“I’m getting a bit ahead of myself.”_

*

 

He and Carolina were the only two, apart from the pilot, on the small ship. He asked about the other members of the project, and Carolina informed him that they were already on the ship.

“You’re the last one who’s joining us,” she said as they blasted through the atmosphere. “The Dakotas came through last month, and York and Maine the month before.”

“What’s with the state names?”

“Our codenames. You’ll have your own assigned to you when we arrive. I can already guess what your codename will be, rookie.”

David smirked. “I grew up in Washington, too.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah. Looks like I’ll never really leave home behind.”

“A bit like York then. He grew up in New York, and that happened to be his state name.”

“You from North or South Carolina?”

“Texas actually.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah, ‘ah’.”

Carolina was an easy person to get along with, despite her consistently calling him ‘rookie’. He protested against it, trying to insist that he wasn’t _that_ young (he was twenty after all) but Carolina just smirked and told him that he was actually the youngest member of the project, making him the ‘rookie’.

“Connecticut is only two years older, but the rest of us will look like dinosaurs next to you,” Carolina said. “And, word of advice: don’t get on either South Dakota’s or Maine’s bad side. Maine’s size will throw you off right away. South looks smaller, but she’s a real bitch and has a mean right hook. Look out for her.

“North’s okay and York’s a loudmouth. Wyoming keeps to himself, as does Connie. Florida’s a nice guy, but Utah and Georgia prefer keeping to themselves. If anything, I’d say to just stay on everyone’s good side. The only person I haven’t seen lose it yet is North, but that might have something to do with the fact that he’s got a person like South for a twin sister.”

David was happy when the pilot – a cranky young woman whose call sign was ‘Four-Seven-Niner’ – announced they were approaching the _Mother of Invention_. David peered out the window and gaped at the sight of the enormous and impressive ship, which hovered just behind the moon of some blue-and-white planet. An army of Pelican ships swarmed around the _Mother of Invention_ , but the ship itself looked dark.

“Night shift,” Carolina said before he could even ask. “We’re a bit late. The Director should be waiting for us, though.”

They docked and David stood, shaking the cramps out of his legs and rubbing his aching back. A three hour ride in an uncomfortable seat really fucked up one’s back and legs. Carolina must’ve been feeling the same, as she stretched her arms above her head, arching her back until they both heard a small crack.

The ships doors flew open, revealing the smoky walkway. Two figures stood on the walkway. One held his hands behind his back whilst the other tapped away on a pad in his hands. When the ship’s doors opened, they both looked up.

And David locked eyes with the Director for the first time.

 

*

 

_“The moment I saw him, I had a bad feeling about him. His eyes were covered for one, and I hate it when I can’t see a person’s eyes. Eyes are the windows to the soul after all. Sometimes you can tell a lot about a person from the look in their eyes. And there was just something about the Director that said not to trust him. He never answered questions; he kept secrets, never revealed the real agenda of the project… He screwed us all over in the end.”_

*

 

The Director and the Counsellor dismissed Carolina as they left the deck, beckoning for David to follow them. He looked at Carolina nervously, and she just gave him a small smile and the tiniest of nods. He trailed behind the two older men, careful not to fall too far behind. He wished Carolina could’ve come with them, as he would’ve felt a lot more comfortable with a friend.

David was lead into a small room that slightly resembled a classroom. The Director and the Counsellor stood at the front, behind a small holographic table whilst David stood on the other side. Behind the two men was what looked like a leader board. The names of the agents Carolina had mentioned earlier were on the board. Carolina was number one, with Agent York being number two, Wyoming at three, the Dakotas at four and five and Maine at six. David noted how the other four freelancers Carolina had mentioned were not on the board.

“Welcome to Project Freelancer, David,” the Counsellor said. He had a calm, monotonous and quiet voice, one that made David immediately feel sleepy. “May I call you David?”

He shrugged.

“You have been selected out of a pool of applicants larger than the number of crewmembers aboard this ship. We expect you to take your position aboard this ship seriously, and that you will follow orders and perform to the best of your ability.”

“Yes sir.”

“You will be assigned a suit of armour, an armour enhancement, a locker and a room. You will be expected to care for you equipment and keep it optimum condition. Rooms are inspected every Sunday, and are expected to be kept clean and presentable.”

“Yes sir.”

“Assign him a codename,” the Director said. He had a heavy Southern drawl.

The Counsellor nodded and tapped away on his pad for several seconds. He brought up a list on the pad. David could see the names of the other Freelancers on the list with their codenames listed alongside them. The Counsellor entered David’s name at the bottom, and entered his codename in beside it.

“You have been assigned the name ‘Washington’,” the Counsellor said, the tiniest of smiles tugging at his lips. “It should not be too difficult to remember.”

“Of course not,” David sighed.

“Your room is 312-B and you have locker 18,” the Counsellor said, fishing a set of dog tags from his pocket and handing them to Washington. “Your armour is stored in your locker. Training begins at 0800 hours. Dismissed.”

Washington saluted before he left. He made it down the corridor and turned the corner before he realised he had no idea where the locker room, the bedrooms or anything else were. There weren’t any signs anywhere on the ship and, since it was the night shift, there were no soldiers wandering around. He eventually did find two soldiers, shuffling back to their quarters, and he asked where the rooms where. The two soldiers looked at him, looked at each other and looked back to him before they started to laugh loudly. They walked away without giving him an answer, talking about ‘stupid rookies’ as they did.

He was getting more and more frustrated by the second and ended up lashing out, punching the wall angrily before he heard someone chuckle behind him.

“Temper, temper,” the person said. Wash span around, frowning at the sight of a man in gold armour. The guy’s helmet was in his hand, and he was running his other hand through his short, brown hair. “That’s military property you’re punching right there.”

“Sorry, sir,” Wash mumbled, rubbing at his eyes. “I’m… I’m a little lost.”

“Where you headed?” the guy said, walking up to stand beside him.

“I’m looking for Room 312-B, sir,” Wash said. He jogged to keep up with the guy’s fast pace.

“Stop calling me sir, rookie,” the guy laughed. “And you’re in the room next to me. You the new Freelancer?”

“Yes sir. I mean – Yes.”

“Sweet. I’m Agent New York. Everyone just calls me York.”

“Washington.”

“That’s a bit of a mouthful. I’m just gonna call you Wash if that’s fine.”

“It’s better than rookie.”

York grinned. “So, yet met any other Freelancers yet?”

“Only Carolina. She was on the ship that picked me up. No one else is awake. Which brings me to the question of why are you awake?”

“Late training session,” York said with a shrug. “I wanted to meet the rookie. Then Carolina showed up and told me to beat it and I’d rather not argue with her. She’s kind of the boss around here, considering she’s number one.”

“You’re number two though, aren’t you?” Wash said, trying to remember just where York had been on the leader board.

“Yup, but Carolina’s the Alpha. Don’t get on her bad side.”

“Funny. She told me not to get on _your_ bad side.”

“Me specifically?”

“You and everyone else, except for some guy called North.”

“North’s the greatest. You’ll get along fine with him. Just watch out for –“

“South?”

“Her and Maine.”

“Got it.”

“Here we are,” York said loudly as they finally approached the bedrooms. “I’m next door and North is across the hall. Maine’s next to North, Wyoming’s next to Maine and Florida, Georgia and Utah are down at the end. Holler if you need anything.”

“I’m not a kid,” Wash protested as York headed to his room.

“Whatever you say, rookie,” York laughed, shutting his door behind him.

Grumbling, Wash shouldered the door open and headed straight for the bed inside, barely taking note of the room. He dumped his bag on the floor and collapsed on the bed, asleep in seconds

 

*

 

The beeping of the alarm clock woke him up the next morning. He blinked blearily, groaning into the pillow before he sat up and stretched, groaning once more at the sight of the alarm clock, which said 5:30am. He switched it off and climbed out of bed, changing into fresh clothes before leaving the room.

“Morning, rookie,” a familiar voice said. Wash frowned at the sight of York, already dressed in armour and waiting for Wash outside of the younger one’s room. “Sleep well?”

“Fine,” Wash mumbled, trailing after York. “Stop calling me rookie.”

“No chance, rookie.” York grinned as Wash groaned. “You’re first up in training this morning. North and South volunteered to kick your ass.”

“Thanks for sounding so confident in my abilities.”

“No offense kiddo, but you seriously look like you need a sandwich. Like, Connie could probably snap you in two.”

“Connie?”

“I prefer Connecticut.”

Both men turned to watch the brown-armoured woman walk up to them. She was shorter than both of them, but her armour looked heavy. If she punched Wash, he would most definitely not be getting back up again. As she approached, she pulled off her helmet. She narrowed her eyes at Wash.

“New kid?” she asked York.

“Yep,” York said, clapping Wash on the shoulder. “Connie, meet Washington. I think he prefers ‘rookie’ though.”

“I prefer Wash,” he growled.

“Nice to meet you… _rookie_ ,” Connie said, her pursed lips twisting into a smile as she pushed past Wash.

“Thanks, York,” Wash muttered.

“No problem, kiddo,” York laughed.

 

*

 

_“I got along with pretty much everyone. They were already a close knit group when I got there, but they welcomed me with open arms. York, North and Carolina were the easiest to get along with. Maine became my… friend, but it took some time to get him to do more than grunt in response to my questions. Wyoming was a bit of a dick. Georgia and Utah were never around, and Florida preferred to be by himself._

_“And Connie... Connie was my friend too. I was close with her. Until she let the leader board get to her, and then she –_

_“Getting ahead of myself again.”_

*

 

His armour was steel and yellow. It looked nice, but it weighed a tonne. Back at his old base, he’d only worn a chest piece, a helmet and guards on his elbows and knees. He wasn’t used to the under-suit or the heavy pieces of armour. And he definitely wasn’t used to the EMP fitted into his armour.

“We all have our own enhancement,” York said, a smirk on his face as he watched Washington work out how to put his armour on. “I have a healing unit, Carolina has a speed unit, North and South have energy shields, etcetera. You’ll learn to use it in training, but be careful. Utah had a bit of a … _accident_ in training.”

“Wait, what happened?”

“Don’t worry. It probably won’t happen again.”

“Not exactly comforting.”

“You ready, rookie?” South said. She stood behind York, cracking her knuckles. “North said he’ll go easy on you, but that doesn’t mean I will.”

“Don’t kill the rookie, South,” North chuckled as he passed.

“Good luck, Wash,” Connie said. “You’ll need it.”

“Thanks,” Wash swallowed, fitting his helmet into place.

 

*

 

The training room floor was empty, save for Wash and the Dakotas, who stood on the opposite side of the floor. The Dakotas wore purple armour – North wearing dark purple and South wearing light purple – and shared the same armour enhancement. Personality-wise, they were totally different. South was volatile and sarcastic; North was kind and soft spoken.

Wash could see that the twins were talking in hushed tones. _Probably deciding on the best way to kick my ass,_ Wash thought. His eyes drifted upwards and he groaned when he saw the observation deck, and how all of the Freelancers were stood watching. The Director and the Counsellor were watching too. There were even several crew members watching. The butterflies in his stomach intensified.

“ _Begin the program, FILSS,_ ” the Director said, his voice amplified over the training floor.

FILSS was the A.I. who ran the ship. She ran everything from door locks to the engines. The A.I also ran the training floor as well. After the Director spoke, FILSS initialized the program, announcing that the first part of the training process was a two-on-one fight using pugil sticks. Two metallic tables grew out of the ground at either end of the training room floor, bearing the pugil sticks. Wash scooped up his and got ready.

The tables disappeared back into the ground. FILSS counted down from ten, and Wash could feel his heartbeat getting louder with each second.

“ _3… 2… 1…Begin training session._ ”

The twins charged towards Wash, who stood his ground. He swung out as South approached him, hitting her in the shins and knocking her to the ground. He span around and caught North with the flat end of the pugil. The force knocked the older Freelancer back and gave Wash a chance to swing the pugil into North’s stomach.

South clambered back to her feet and charged. Wash tucked in on himself and rolled to the side before using his momentum to push back up onto his feet and spin around, kicking South’s legs from beneath her. North came running up and landed a hit on the side of Wash’s head that sent him stumbling. He barely had a chance to recover before the two twins were at him, and all he could do was parry their attacks. He finally had the chance to knock South back and whacked North around the head before bring his pugil down on the back of South’s neck.

“ _Round complete_ ,” FILSS announced. “ _Point awarded to Agent Washington. Floor reset._ ”

The two tables reappeared once more and Wash dropped his pugil down onto the table at his end of the floor. The twins did the same before moving to stand a few feet apart from each other, fists raised.

“ _Round two:  hand-to-hand combat_ ,” FILSS said as the tables disappeared back into the ground. “ _Round begins.”_

The twins moved in a circle – South headed one way whilst North headed the other. Wash knew he was fucked even before South’s fist connected with the side of his helmet when he wasn’t looking. North managed to land a well-aimed kick right in Wash’s gut and South uppercutted him as he stumbled back. He staggered back to his feet and charged at South but she ducked out of the way. A pair of strong arms wrapped around his waist and he shouted out as he was lifted off of the ground. North carried him over his head and smacked him down onto the ground head-first. The twins stepped back, waiting for Wash to stand up again.

 

He clambered to his feet, feeling dizzier than he had been before. He raised his fists, ready to jump into another scrap when FILSS announced that Round Two was completed. Obviously, the point was awarded to the Dakotas. The next round turned out to be a lock-down paint fight.

Wash stumbled over to his table as two metre tall square blocks rose up out of the ground on the training floor. Wash loaded his gun and turned to face the twins, only to find that they were already using the blocks to hide from him. Cursing, he ducked behind one of the blocks and peaked around the edge, trying to find the twins. He raced forwards and hid around another cover, knowing that South was on the other side. He’d seen her foot poking out from the side. With a smile, he turned the corner and shot her in the head before turning and nabbing North in the chest.

South apparently did not appreciate getting hit in the head as, in the next round, she popped up from behind a corner without any warning and roundhouse kicked Wash in the head, knocking him visor first into the corner of a block with so much force his visor smashed.

He fell to the ground, dizzier than ever before. He could hear North shouting, but the sound was fuzzy and distant. He yanked off his helmet, a hand going to cover the spot where his helmet had slammed into his forehead. It was bleeding already, and it had knocked Wash silly. His vision swam, and he barely registered North’s voice until the older agent tapped his cheek.

“You okay, Wash?” North asked, frowning at the younger agent.

“Hunky dory,” Wash mumbled, rubbing at the wound. “I may vomit.”

“Throw up in _that_ direction, please.”

 

*

 

After the disastrous first training session and a trip to the medical bay, Wash found himself sat in the small canteen by himself, running a hand over the stitched up wound on the back of his head. His helmet had been repaired and the wound was apparently nothing to be scared about, but he had a bad concussion and a hurt sense of pride that needed nursing.

The first fucking day and he’d managed to fuck up everything. He _had_ thrown up, but that had been once he was in the safety of the med bay, away from the prying eyes of the other Freelancers. When he’d finally left the med bay, he found out that the story of his ass-kicking on the training room floor had made the rounds on the ship. Everybody knew, and the taunting from the crew members began.

He wished he were back at his old base.

“You okay?”

He looked up and frowned at Connie, who was out of her armour and looked to be in pyjamas. She slid into the seat across from him, a glass of water in her hands. He hadn’t heard come in or pour the glass.

“Fine, I guess,” Wash said with a sigh, setting his repaired helmet down on the table. “Well, other than my wounded sense of pride and the knowledge of knowing I’ll never live this down.”

“Don’t worry,” Connie said with a smile. “I had to square up against Carolina when I first got here and she was already number one. You did well for being in a fight against two. It wasn’t your fault you took a hit to the head.”

“I know, but everyone saw and now they’re all going to think I’m weak and I’ll never make the leader board –“

“Don’t worry.” Connie reached over and took Wash’s gloved hand in her bare one, rubbing soothing circles into the back of his hand. “The leader board isn’t everything. And it’s only your first day. You’ll get better.”

Connie stood and walked towards the door. Before she left, she turned back and said, “Get some sleep, Wash. And don’t think on it too much. Things always get better.”

 

*

 

_“I didn’t think about it after she told me that. I didn’t dwell on it. Instead, I focused on doing the best I could. I honed my skills and learnt how to hold my own in a fight. And things did get better for me. I managed to make my way to sixth place on the leader board. I earned myself some respect from my fellow Freelancers. I was never the best and I never got rid of the nickname ‘rookie’. I was still the youngest, and still one of the worst fighters. Most of the miraculous things I did were due to luck._

_“But things with Connie got worse. She started to get…_ distant _. The leader board got to her. She started doubting herself and questioning the Director and his motives. She didn’t like being kept in the dark and she started talking bad about him._

_“And then a mission went badly and she became a completely different person.”_

*

 

They’d fucked up the mission. They’d been sent out to retrieve a data file from an Insurrectionist base, but the whole thing had gone pear-shaped. The soldiers sent with them had been killed, the data had not been retrieved and now the Insurrectionists had moved to a new secure location that they could not get a lock on. And it was partially Connie’s fault.

It was Wash’s fault too, but mostly Connie’s. She was the one who was meant to pick the lock and get them into the facility, but she’d triggered the alarm before they could get the door open. Insurrectionist soldiers had swarmed on them and she and Wash had only just managed to get out by the skin of their teeth. Wash had ended up with a knife to the face when his helmet had come off in a scuffle. It bled a lot, but it was nothing to worry about. It was nothing compared to how wounded Connie’s pride was.

Connie vanished the moment she got off the ship. Wash had tried speaking to her on the flight back, but she’d snapped at him and told him to shut up. Obviously, she was beating herself up over what had happened. Her mood and the fact that only two of the ten sent out on the mission were returning muted the atmosphere in the ship. Only four-seven-niner spoke, conveying the information of the failed mission.

Wash sighed through his nose as he watched Connie race off, already pulling off her helmet. Four-seven-niner stood beside him, wiping at her visor.

“Is she gonna be okay?” she asked, pointing at Connie’s retreating form.

“I’m about to find out,” Wash said, following after Connie.

“Shouldn’t you be going to the med bay, rookie?” four-seven-niner called after him.

“Later!”

He found Connie sat in the observation deck. From where she sat, she could see the leader board. Washington was still at number six, but Connie had never made it to the top. The only person she was ahead of was Florida, but Wash could hazard a guess that she would fall behind even him because of her failure to get into the facility.

Wash sighed. “It wasn’t your fault, Connie.”

“Easy for you to say,” she scoffed. “You didn’t drop the ball.”

“The ball got dropped. We were all there, it’s everyone’s responsibility.”

“Dammit, why are you doing that?”

Wash frowned. “What am I doing?”

“Making excuses,” Connie said angrily, slamming her fist down on the bench. “I’m not making excuses for myself… why should you?”

“I’m trying to make you feel better.”

“Yeah? Great. Hey, how about you go make Carolina feel better? Go pat Maine on the head. See how that works out for you.”

“We all make mistakes.”

“No! _We_ don’t.” Connie stood and turned to face Wash, her eyes glittering angrily and her helmet in her hands. “That’s the point. We don’t all make mistakes. Some of us very specifically make mistakes and others don’t seem to make any mistakes at all.”

“Connie, come on…”

“That’s why they’re doing all of this!” She gestured to the leader board behind them. “These missions! The rankings! They’re drawing a line between us, Wash. And you’re either on one side of that line or you’re on the other. And it’s getting pretty damn clear which side I’m on.”

Connie had her back to him. He stepped forwards and rested a hand on her shoulder. “No one thinks like that; we’re a team.”

“I’m not talking about you guys,” she said, pushing his hand away angrily. “I mean them. _Him_.”

“The Director? He’s given us everything. He’s helping us!”

“Helping us? Wake up! Wake the fuck up. He’s filtering us! This is a selection process Wash. I don’t know what for but if you’re not on the top of that list you mean nothing to him.”

“You’re just overreacting. You’ve always been hard on yourself.”

“Not as hard as they are.” She shoved her helmet into Wash’s hands. “And not nearly as hard as they’re going to be.” She turned away from him again. “And don’t call me Connie. Makes me sound like a fucking kid. Call me C.T.”

Connie started to walk away, but stopped before the doorway and turned to face him. “Oh, and that line I talked about? You better hurry up and figure out what side you’re on, Agent Washington, before they figure it out for you.”

She left, leaving Wash to stand there and stare at her helmet, wondering what had brought on this change.

 

*

 

_“She was a changed person once she became C.T. Quicker to anger, quicker to question, harder to get along with. That friendship we’d built up? It went to shit pretty quickly. Apparently, it all meant jack-fucking-squat to her. I tried to talk to her – tried to make her see sense – but she’d have none of it. She could only see the worst in herself. She could only see the worst in anything._

_Anyway, after she decided she wanted to be C.T instead of Connie, we got a new recruit – this woman called Agent Texas. She was good, really good. She took Maine, Wyoming and York on at once during an impromptu training session on her first day aboard the_ Mother of Invention. _She was kicking their asses. And then the dickheads had to use live ammunition on the training floor. Maine threw a grenade and it landed next to York, who was down. Tex acted fast and used the lockdown paint to lockdown hardness of his armour but the bomb went off and York lost an eye._

_The Director actually applauded Maine and Wyoming for using live ammunition on the training floor, saying that ingenuity and adaptability on the battlefield were ‘admirable traits’, despite the fact that York was lying with shrapnel through his fucking face less than five feet away from him._

_A few days after that little incident, we had a new mission. We needed to retrieve this artefact known as the Sarcophagus from a 110 story building filled to the brim with security. I was on Team A with Carolina and Maine. We had to infiltrate the building and retrieve the artefact, whilst Team B – North, Wyoming and C.T – went after some high level officer who held the code to the Sarcophagus. I was on lock-picking duty, until York showed up. He wasn’t meant to be out of the med bay until the next day, but he seemed fine. He was just lacking a bit in depth perception._

_C.T asked more questions than what she should’ve done, and made some snarky remark about the world being a ‘tough place when you get kicked off the leader board’ after we found out that South wasn’t coming with us. The Director dismissed us, and we found ourselves on our merry way.”_

*

 

They were in the building and were synced with Team B. Security had been pretty easy for such a high-level building so far, but Wash had the feeling that their luck was about to run out sooner or later. And, sure enough, York set off the alarm whilst trying to pick a holographic lock. He managed to get the door open and Maine, Carolina and Wash entered the Vault whilst York disappeared to take care of the triggered alarm system.

“Alright guys, spread out,” Carolina said as the door swung shut behind them. “What we need is in here. It’s probably something small, easy to miss. Take as many scans as possible, there may be other things we can use.”

Every surface in the Vault held numerous weapons and even one or two spaceships hanging from the ceiling. Maine immediately walked to the nearest table and picked up what looked like a mix between a grenade launcher and a knife. The biggest and strongest Freelancer actually looked good with the thing.

“That’s a good look,” Wash said and Maine grunted in response.

Wash moved over to what looked like a concrete box. It was almost as big as he was and looked heavy. Back when they planning the heist, the Director had told them they’d be looking for an object with specific markings on it. They hadn’t known the size, dimensions or the density of said object however. It just had to be their luck that it would be the biggest thing in the building.

“ _Carolina?_ ” York’s voice crackled to life over the radio, uncomfortably loud in Wash’s ear. “ _Motion trackers indicate you got an enemy team right outside the door._ ”

“Well, let’s hope they’re not as good at picking locks as you, York,” Carolina said, the sarcasm in her voice heavy. She turned to Wash and Maine. “Alright team, we’re about to have company.”

“Boss, I’ve got good news and bad news,” Wash said, jogging over to Carolina.

“Hit me.”

“I found the markings we’re looking for. Unfortunately, they’re on _that._ ”

Carolina followed his line of sight and groaned when she saw the Sarcophagus. But, she was smart. She figured out how to get it to the roof, which was where York was. The window-washer unit they’d seen earlier was used to get the thing to the roof, and Carolina used Maine to counter balance it. Wash could hear the gunshots from the lower floor and shivered when he thought of what Maine would be doing to the poor soldiers.

The door to the Vault flew open and Carolina and Wash opened fire at them. They squad was down in seconds, leaving only one solider still standing. He was larger than the others, and the visor of his helmet was painted to resemble a shark’s mouth. He walked through the smoke slowly, carrying a flame thrower.

It was so overly-dramatic that Wash couldn’t help but turn to Carolina and say, “What the fuck is with this guy?”

They dived to either side of the room as the fire came flying towards them. Wash opened fire at the guy, but none of his bullets pierced his armour. Frustrated, he pulled the pin on a grenade and chucked it at Sharkface, but the soldier turned his flamethrower on the grenade, which made it explode short of its target.

On the other side of the room, Carolina was ready to fire when one of the weapons on the table before her exploded, sending her flying back. One of the weapons – a fuel rod canon – flew off the table and landed on the floor near to Wash. He dived for it and fired at Sharkface. But, because it’s his fucking luck and his luck sucked, the shot actually bounced off of the floor and hit the wall behind Sharkface.

“What the hell?” Wash shouted, looking down at the canon in shock and forgetting the fight for a moment. “It bounces?! Who designs a gun that bounces? This is the worst gun ever, of all –“

Carolina pushed him back behind one of the counters before he could finish his sentence, the fire from Sharkface’s flamethrower missing them by inches.

“Stay low,” she growled before taking off at a run. Wash watched he scale the wall to the roof and jump onto one of the purple ships hanging from the ceiling. His mouth hung open as she got Sharkface to fire at the purple plane. Carolina tossed a grenade into the ship and back flipped off of it as it exploded. The ship hit Sharkface and knocked him down and Carolina scooped up a Gravity Hammer and hurled it at him as he was about to get back up again.

“That guy was a dick,” Wash said as he jogged over to Carolina.

“Come on,” Carolina said with a groan. “Let’s get moving, Wash.”

“That bit with the purple plane? That was just showing off.”

 

*

 

_“We got up to the roof, and we found Texas there. She planting a bomb, and Carolina got angry with her. Of course, our luck would have us get surrounded by Insurrectionist soldiers. One of them told York to disarm the bomb, only to find out that said bomb was a transmitter and that it was transmitting our location to the_ Mother of Invention.

_“Carolina used her cloaking enhancement to get the jump on the soldiers. York managed to get the leader to hold the transmitter. And, right at that second, the_ Mother of Invention _fired at us.”_

 

*

 

The force of the blast knocked Wash ass-over-teakettle. He flew back, knocking into York. When he clambered back to his feet, he saw that the blast had punctured a hole right through the ceiling. The roof began to crumble and the building trembled. Texas shoved past Wash, scooped up a jet pack from a dead soldier and kicked the Sarcophagus off of the roof before taking off into the sky. York shouted out and pointed to the Pelican hovering by the building. He took off towards the edge, Carolina and Wash desperately trying to keep up as the roof crumbled beneath their feet.

“This must be karma for kicking Maine out the window!” Carolina shouted.

“I don’t wanna do this!” York said.

“Son of a bitch!” Wash shouted as they dived off of the edge.

And then they were freefalling through the air, the ground rushing up to meet them. The Pelican fell alongside them, and the Sarcophagus was fast-approaching. Wash blinked once and Carolina was stood on the Sarcophagus, trying to line it up with the Pelican, which was slowing down to try and catch it.

Two Hornets suddenly flew at them, firing randomly in the hopes of catching and killing them. Carolina jumped off of the Sarcophagus and Wash landed on it with a thud. He straightened out and aimed at the Hornets with his rifle. The wind was fucking up his aim but he managed to take out one of the pilots, which made the Hornet crash into a neighbouring building. He aimed at the other Hornet, but Texas entered his vision. She was flying straight for him and he only had time to shout out before she crashed into him. Wash and the Sarcophagus crashed into the Pelican. Whilst Wash groaned on the floor, Texas ran straight past him to the cockpit.

“Get the package back to command, now!” Texas shouted.

“On it,” four-seven-niner said.

Wash took off his helmet and rubbed at the spot he’d hit when he crashed in the Pelican as Texas walked back in, pulling the jet pack from her back as she did.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Peachy,” he muttered, putting his helmet back on. He looked at the jet pack in Tex’s hands, which was sparking. “So, jetpacks, huh?”

Tex didn’t reply. She instead dumped the jetpack on top of the Sarcophagus before she jumped out of the open bay door of the Pelican, leaving Wash alone in the Pelican.

“That was… interesting,” he mumbled as the hatch swung shut.

 

*

 

Four-seven-niner was a damned good pilot. She managed to pick up North, Wyoming and C.T safely, even though they were in the middle of a warzone and were getting shot at from all sides. Wyoming had taken a shot to the shoulder, but C.T had managed to stabilize him.

“Where’s Carolina, Maine and York?” North shouted over the gunfire.

“I’m tracking them down the highway,” four-seven-niner said as they took off into the sky. “Looks like Maine’s wounded.”

“How bad?”

“Shot in the throat bad.”

“Oh shit,” Wash said, moving to stand at the open hatch. “How far away are they?”

“We’re coming up to them now.”

York and Maine sat beside a closed off tunnel. Maine was on the ground and York was crouched down beside him, desperately trying to staunch the flow of blood pouring from Maine’s neck. North jumped down and helped York to carry Maine inside the Pelican. Wash felt the colour drain from his face as the sight of just how much blood was on Maine’s white armour.

“Wash, help me,” North said, gesturing to Maine’s ravaged throat. “He’s got a bullet in his chest too.”

Wash’s hands were trembling as he put pressure on the wound. Maine’s helmet was off and North was peeling away the chest piece and shoulder plates. Maine was only partially conscious, and he was blinking blearily at Wash, who was shaking worse than ever.

“Is he gonna be okay?” he asked North, who’d also taken off his helmet.

“If we get him medical attention ASAP,” North said. C.T handed North the med-kit and he bundled up a set of bandages before pressing them down on the bullet wound in the right side of Maine’s chest. “Unfortunately, we’re miles away from the _Mother of Invention._ ”

“There’s a civilian vessel not too far from here,” four-seven-niner said. “They should let us on once they found out who we are?”

“Where’s Carolina?” C.T asked.

“She and Texas went after the code,” York said. “I told Carolina to just let Tex go, but she’s determined to get it first.”

“You’d think she’d have bigger things to worry about,” C.T said angrily, gesturing to Maine.

 

*

 

_“Carolina was obsessed with being better than Texas. Nothing else mattered when it came to their rivalry. It even got to the point where … I need to stop doing that._

_“Anyway, we found Carolina just beyond the tunnel. Texas got the package first, and Carolina was fuming over that. We got Maine to a civilian medical vessel just beyond the planet’s atmosphere, and we got Maine fixed up. Well, to the best degree we could. He was alive, but his vocal cords we destroyed beyond repair. He would never talk again._

_“After we retrieved the package, Texas was moved to the top of the leader board. Carolina was spiteful. She was suddenly training at all hours of the day and night, giving 200% on a mission and getting snappy if you so much as breathed in a way she thought could compromise the mission. She’d been my friend, but the competition got rid of the Carolina I’d known, much like how it had gotten rid of Connie._

_“The implantations of the A.I started not long after that. York got Delta; Carolina gave up Sigma to Maine so that he was able to communicate, Wyoming got Gamma and North got Theta._

_“But, before all of that, C.T betrayed us.”_

 

*

 

He’d only seen the person on the screen for half a second, but he was sure it had been an Insurrectionist soldier. And, given by the way C.T reacted when she saw Wash watching her, it was obviously something extremely important and something extremely secretive. He had his suspicions, but he didn’t act on them. He couldn’t be sure that C.T had been speaking to the Insurrectionists, because why would she do that? It just wasn’t like the C.T he knew.

Then again, the C.T he knew had been gone a long time.

 

*

 

It was after they took out an entire bay full of soldiers on a space station in the middle of a junkyard that Wash’s suspicions were confirmed. C.T was gone and she didn’t come back, even when the nuclear device was detonated. After Wash was dragged into the Pelican by his balls, he noticed how she still hadn’t shown up. And then Carolina told the Director that she was gone and they officially declared her ‘gone rogue’.

That’s when it sunk it that she really was gone.

He sat in silence, barely even looking at York and North on the flight back to the ship. South poked fun at him from across the bay, making fun of him for having to be pulled into the ship with a grappling hook. He would’ve made some snarky remark – maybe even shoot back that it was _their_ fault for not telling him about what happened to Georgia when he used the jetpacks (and he _had_ been wondering where Georgia had disappeared to) – but he really wasn’t in the mood for banter.

Which was why, when South made yet another comment on the matter, he shouted at her. “South, will you just shut the fuck up for once?”

The whole hangar fell silent, all the Freelancers staring at Wash. He could see South’s fists clench and knew he was in for it later. Amazingly, he didn’t care. The only thing he cared for was four-seven-niner announcing that they were approaching the _Mother of Invention._ Several silent minutes later, they’d docked and Wash was the first to storm off the Pelican. No one tried to follow him, and for that he was grateful.

 

*

 

He sat in the locker room alone, glaring down at his reflection in his visor’s helmet. He’d changed out of his armour and was in his civilian clothes, but he’d yet to leave the locker room. No one had come to find him, but he suspected that South would be waiting to kick his ass. The more he thought about it, the less her cared.

Growling angrily, he shoved his helmet into his locker and slammed it shut behind him. He heard a small snorting sound, and looked up to find York standing at the end of the row of lockers, helmet off and smirking at Wash.

“Temper, temper,” York said, and it was so reminiscent of the first time they met that it made Wash’s shoulders slump. That was before Connie turned bad, before Maine lost his voice, before this whole Texas-Carolina rivalry that was tearing the entire team to shreds…

“You doing okay?” York asked, all traces of amusement in his voice gone.

“Peachy,” Wash spat, glaring at his name tag on his locker. “Just peachy. C.T’s gone rogue, Carolina’s at our throats every five minutes, I keep finding new ways to fuck up and everything seems to be going to shit, but I’m just fine otherwise.”

“No need to bite his head off,” North said, suddenly appearing at the other end of the room. “By the way, look out for South. She’s a little pissed off at you.”

“When isn’t she pissed off at someone?” Wash asked.

“I know, but you went off at her.”

“Maybe because I don’t need to hear about how funny my fuck up was yet again, North. It kinda sucks when you’re the worst on the team because you get all the shit no one else has to deal with.”

With that, he stomped away.

 

*

 

“ _No one was as friendly with Connie as I was, so no one else was feeling just as angry and as betrayed as I was. Oh yeah, they could all play the part of kicked puppies well, but I think most of them were pissed more than anything._

_“After C.T left, I started hearing about the Alpha. I had no idea what it was at first, since I was only getting bits and pieces off of North and York, who’d only been getting small fragments from their A.I. No one knew what it was at the time. Well, North and York knew it was the creator of the fragments and that the A.I were obsessed with it. North suggested that the Alpha created the fragments or something like that, but York got a bit nervous about the ‘or something’ part. That’s when I started thinking that this was all going to go to shit._

_“Wyoming and Florida found C.T and the Insurrectionist’s new base. We attacked it and Tex and Carolina went after C.T to retrieve both her armour and the Insurrectionist leader. They failed to both of those things, but Tex…_

_“Tex killed C.T.”_

*

 

“Where’s C.T?” Wash asked when the two ladies joined them at the dock. He noticed that neither C.T nor her armour were with them, meaning that the mission had failed.

“She’s dead,” Carolina said, looking over at Tex as she did. “Texas went all out on her.”

For several seconds, Wash didn’t even register the words properly. His mind was screaming that she was wrong, that she was lying, that C.T was still alive and that she’d be here any second now. But the words sunk in and Wash stumbled back. His helmet suddenly seemed too confining and he yanked it off, sucking in deep breaths as he bent over, hands on his knees.

“Is he gonna be okay?” he heard Texas ask as North walked over and helped him over to the Pelican.

“He and C.T were best friends,” Carolina spat. “So you tell me.”

 

*

 

Back before Connie left, they used to sit by the windows on the ship in the late hours of the night, just watching the stars and the planets pass by with a steaming mug in their hands. It was nice and peaceful, and they used the time to talk about seemingly random things. Wash would tell Connie about the cats he used to own before his mom died and Connie would talk about her father. They shared childhood stories and exchanged playful banter.

Now he sat there alone, watching the stars in silence and thinking about how much emptier the deck felt without Connie sat there with him.

“You doing okay?”

Carolina stood in the doorway to the deck, still in her armour but holding her helmet under her arm. She made her way over to sit beside Wash, setting her helmet down beside her and watching Wash carefully, as if he was going to attack.

“I’m okay,” he mumbled, rubbing at his bare arm. “For the most part.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“I’m here if you need me.”

“I know…”

Carolina looked as if she wanted to say more, but she closed her mouth and opted for watching the stars like Wash was, obviously waiting for Wash to speak first. They sat together in silence for what felt like hours before Wash finally spoke.

“You don’t need to sit with me,” he said.

“I know,” Carolina sighed, shifting uncomfortably in her seat.

“Then why are you?”

“I’m here to make sure you don’t do something stupid.”

“Why would I –“

“You loved her.”

He stiffened.

“You did, didn’t you? You love her.”

He stared at her.

“Wash, not talking is worse than talking. Get it off your chest.”

He looked down at his hands. “Yeah…”

“What?”

“I loved her,” he said, still looking at his hands. “But not like how you think. I loved her like a sister. I love all of you guys. You’re all I have left now. This lifestyle… the army life is the only thing I have to my name. I lost everything else a long time ago. And when I came here, I thought I’d be able to build a life and a name for myself again. But then things like this happen, and it seems like the whole project is spiralling downwards…”

Carolina rested a hand on his shoulder. “We all hit rock bottom. We just need to keep on pushing. Connie would want you to do that.”

“How do you know what Connie would want?”

“Because she was my friend too.” Wash looked up at Carolina, who’s eyes were swimming with tears. “She was my friend as well. And I know she loved you back. She cared about you a lot. We all do.” Her grip on his shoulder tightened. “We’re a team, and, sorry Wash, but you’ll always be the rookie to us, even though it seems like you go through worse shit than any of us.”

They lapsed into silence once more, before Wash wiped at his eyes. “What did you do before all of this?”

“What d’you mean?”

“Family? Home? Friends?”

“I’m from Texas. I used to live with my dad, but we were never close. My mom was hardly ever around but we were never apart when she was around. She worked for the Marines, and one day she never came home.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “It was years ago. Anyway, I joined the UNSC because I wanted to follow in her footsteps. My dad… he’s still back home. He never got over mom’s death.” She sighed through her nose before looking up at Wash. “And you? What’s your story?”

“I grew up in Seattle,” Wash said, crossing his arms over his chest. “My dad was a police officer. He was killed during some drug bust when I was younger and my mom died of a heart attack when I was fourteen. My sister joined the army and basically left me to be homeless. I joined when I was old enough.”

“Sorry, Wash.”

“I’ve gotten used to the fact that I’m going to have a shitty life,” he shrugged. “It’s a fact I accepted a long time ago.”

 

*

 

_“The competition between Carolina and Tex just got worse and worse by the second. Carolina was pushing herself way too hard in order to beat Texas, but it still wasn’t good enough. And then she got reckless and demanded that she be given the A.I fragments – Eta and Iota – that were supposed to be mine and South’s. That drove South mad._

_“When she woke up after the surgery, she immediately demanded a match and obviously it would be against Texas. The two of them faced off in the training room. Just as they were about to start, the Director showed up. He panicked when he saw the two of them about to fight and shouted the name ‘Allison’._

_“The A.I went mad. They were suddenly shouting Allison’s name and my friends were dropping to their knees around me, clawing at their heads and screaming out in pain. All I could do was stand back and watch. I asked the Counsellor if there was anything I could do, but he just stared at me. He was at a loss, just like I was._

_“And it all stopped. They were all able to get back to their feet, but Carolina was still screaming. Two A.I in one person’s head was too much. But the Director did nothing, saying it was her decision and that she had to live with that. Texas finally knocked her out and she was taken to recovery, but she didn’t wake up._

_“And despite that incident, I was still up for implantation.”_

*

 

They were giving him Epsilon. Even after Carolina had practically gone insane and the other Freelancers had all but collapsed during the training room incident, they were still going to implant Epsilon. And he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t scared.

They barely gave him time to repair. They cornered him as he was on his way to Recovery to see Carolina, telling him that he needed to go with them right that second. He’d been looking forward to receiving his own A.I but, given recent happenings, his excitement had become quite muted.

But he didn’t argue. He still followed that old philosophy the CO told him: head down and follow the rules. He didn’t question everything like Connie used to and he didn’t demand for more like Carolina. He was an obedient soldier through and through. So he just clenched his fists tightly when he heard them drilling the A.I into his mind, screwed his eyes shut when he felt the humming of the A.I at the back of his mind. And everything seemed like it was going to be fine, until Epsilon started to scream in his head.

 

*

 

Epsilon was killing him. He was showing Wash things he did not want to see: a woman getting ready to leave, a red-headed child running away, and a name being repeated in his head over and over again.

_Allison Allison Allison._

He fell off the operating table and ended up on his knees on the floor, screaming and ripping at his hair, pushing away the doctors when they tried to subdue him. He screamed until his throat was raw, begging for Epsilon to stop. He didn’t want to see Allison, but that was all Epsilon cared about. And Epsilon knew he was hurting Wash. Epsilon kept piling on the memories until Wash collapsed, unable to bear the pain anymore.

 

*

 

“ _I drifted in and out of consciousness for quite some time. They kept Epsilon in for as long as possible to see if it would work out, but he caused more and more trouble until they eventually pulled him out. And, in the meantime, everything had gone to shit. Texas and York had gone rogue and had apparently attacked Wyoming. Maine was nowhere to be found. South and North were at each other’s throats. And Carolina was awake. But they were pulling the A.I, yet she refused to give hers up._

_“And that’s when the ship went down.”_

 

*

 

From what he’d heard, York and Texas had managed to break their way back into the ship. North and South had taken off to fight, leaving Wash to stumble his way out of the med bay. He was almost trampled by the soldiers flocking to their station as no one was giving so much as a second glance. He stumbled his way down the corridor and swore when he heard FILSS announce that the gravity was disabled.

Stumbling turned to floating around awkwardly, and soon the ship was rumbling like they were under attack. He floated around the corner and hit a crew member. Groaning, he floated back and grabbed onto a railing. He looked up and gawked at the sight of York, who was always gripping the railing.

“York?”

“Wash?” York said before he laughed. “You finally woke up!”

“W-What –“

“Listen, I can’t stay. I need to find Carolina before she kills Tex.”

“What’s going on? Why did you leave with her?”

“There’s so much going on that you don’t know,” York said. “I don’t have time to explain but I’ll come back for you.”

“York –“

“Not now, Wash. I need to go.”

And York floated away, leaving Wash even more confused and hurt than before. He floated aimlessly around the ship, trying to find out what was going on but he could either find no one or no one had the time to explain. He ended up in the deck where he’d spoken with Carolina, watching as the snow-covered planet they’d been orbiting grew closer. The _Mother of Invention_ was crashing.

Flames licked the windows as they entered the atmosphere. Wash grabbed onto a railing and clung to it for dear life, shouting out as the ship rumbled. The window was cracking and the snow-covered ground was fast-approaching. He closed his eyes and waited for the eventual crash that tossed him out of the window.

 

*

 

“—sh! Wash! Wash, come on! Wake up, man, wake up!”

It was cold, his helmet was off and it was York who was shouting. Those were the first three things he registered before he noticed the pain in his abdomen or the sticky substance clinging to his skin. York was above him, patting at his face with one hand whilst the other covered the obvious wound in Wash’s stomach. His green A.I Delta hovered next to him.

“ _Agent Washington will survive if he receives medical attention_ ,” Delta said.

“We need to get you help, Wash,” York said, ready to life Washington up before they heard a shout nearby. “Oh shit.”

“ _York, I suggest leaving Agent Washington_.”

“What?!” York sounded angry. “I can’t leave him!”

“ _If you do not leave, you will be captured and imprisoned for going rogue. Agent Washington will be found and will receive the help he needs. Taking him with us would only slow you down, and would also make him a fugitive._ ”

York looked as if he was struggling internally before he cursed and slapped the snow-covered ground.

“Sorry, Wash,” he said before he stood and disappeared.

Groaning, Wash turned over onto his stomach and reached out for York’s slowly disappearing form. He wanted to call out for York, but his voice betrayed him. And, seconds later, a group of soldiers rounded the corner and spotted him. He was taken to the partially destroyed medical bay, where they managed to patch him up.

The only thing they couldn’t fix was his slowly shattering mind.

 

*

 

_“That was the last time I saw North and York alive. The next time I saw them, it was when I was working as a recovery unit and their recovery beacons had gone off. I felt so little when I saw their bodies that it shocked even me. But, Epsilon had imprinted all of his memories on me, and Epsilon had seen some shit. I had no more room for grief or anger because I had so many memories that it made it all seem insignificant._

_“And then there was South… South, the one who had always been a bitch to me in the project. I never thought she’d be the one to literally shoot me in the back and leave me for dead. And then she took the A.I units I’d recovered and took off as the Meta arrived._

_“After the_ Mother of Invention _crashed, Maine attacked Carolina. We found out that it had been_ him _who’d attacked Wyoming, not Texas. Maine stole Carolina’s armour enhancement and her A.I before he tossed her off a cliff to her death. He’d become a monster. And they called him the Meta._

_“The Meta found me after South shot me. I played dead, knowing he’d actually kill me if he knew I was alive. The Meta took the armour enhancement I’d been given when I received my armour and left. Both he and South thought I was dead, but I’d scavenged York’s healing unit from his armour and had implanted it in my own earlier, so I survived._

_“Unlucky for South.”_

*

 

He was hunting an old friend.

Granted, he and Maine had never been extremely close, but it still felt weird to be hunting someone he used to fight alongside of. He remembered how Maine would always stand on the fringe of their group during his Freelancer days. Maine was never one for limelight, but he’d been a friend.

He was monster now. A monster who didn’t even call himself Agent Maine anymore. His A.I Sigma drove him mad and turned him into the Meta. Wash hoped that some piece of Maine was still in there somewhere, but he guessed that his chances of that happening where quite slim. But, it’d be the first good thing to happen to him in years if Maine was still in there somewhere.

Command had him travel to Blood Gulch to find the Reds and the Blues. Instead, he found a robot that spoke nothing but Spanish, a crazy old sergeant and a party girl who seemed to think he was cop. Thankfully, the sergeant knew where to find one of the members of the Blue team who’d had extensive knowledge of the Omega A.I, which he was also on the hunt for.

He managed to get to Private Caboose, only to find that the guy was a complete idiot. Caboose did, however, know where to find the second member and former leader of Blue team. They found Church at Outpost 28-A. Church was less than pleased upon seeing Caboose and almost shot the poor guy. Fortunately for Caboose, he wasn’t the world’s greatest shot. He showed a lot of displeasure at finding that Wash was a Freelancer and was against letting them in, until Washington pointed out the large hole in his ‘secure facility’. Church let them in after that.

Command got into contact with him and gave him his new orders. He was to head back to Valhalla Outpost 17-B and investigate the ship that Agent Texas crashed. His mission was to stop the Meta. He accepted his orders, but the Blues were a bit more reluctant. Somehow Wash managed to get the moron to come with him to Valhalla. Church only agreed to come after he learnt that it had been Agent Texas’s ship. Apparently, he’d dated Texas in the past. Caboose apparently worshipped Church and would follow Church anywhere.

They made their way to Valhalla and they snuck past the guards who’d set up a perimeter in the canyon and made their way to the crash site.

“Recognize this ship?” Wash asked Church when they reached the crash.

“Yeah, this looks like it,” Church said with a nod.

“Sheila?” Caboose suddenly asked, making Washington frown. “Sheila. Are you okay?”

“Uh… what’s he doing?” he asked Church.

“Oh, we transferred out tank’s training program to the ship, so that it could help us repair it.”

“Did you inform Command that you moved the program to the ship?”

“Yeah, we’re not that big on paperwork.”

“That’s a good thing in this case. If they don’t know it’s there, they may not have tried to activate it.” Washington moved forwards and pried away one of the panels on the side of the ship, revealing the circuitry beneath. It was the diagnostics panel. “Ah ha, here we go.”

“ _Hello_ ,” the A.I said, sounding rather tired and worn-out. “ _Thank you for activating the – wait, where am I?_ ”

“Sheila?” Caboose asked again.

“Program, instruction,” Wash said. “Run a full diagnostic, and load the logs from your last flight.”

“ _Affirmative. Excep-Exception: the system has taken dam-taken damage. I am functioning – I am functioning at minimum capacity-ity-ity._ ”

“Program, instruction: override exception and –“

“Do not talk to her like that!” Caboose snapped. “She is not a program.”

Wash backed away from Caboose, eyebrows raised beneath his helmet.

“Um, I’m just gonna stand behind Caboose for a couple of minutes,” Church said, backing away slowly, obviously sensing the anger coming off of Caboose. “You know, for safety reasons.”

“ _Port engine destroyed,_ ” Shelia said.

“Okay, I only want to replay the logs from the crash,” Wash said to Caboose. “Can you get it –“

Church backed away even further, shaking his head.

“I mean _her_ to do that?”

“Sheila,” Caboose said to the ship, “Um, would you go ahead and do that, ah, thing that he just said to me?”

“ _Begin-Beginning playb-playback.”_

The logs contained the recording of Tex’s and Sheila’s last few seconds aboard the ship before it crashed. Sheila gave over manual control of the ship to Tex part way during the recording, and Tex’s last words before the crash were, “Everybody hold –“

The log ended with a beep.

“Okay, so after that, the ship crashed here,” Wash said, rubbing the back of his helmet. “And from what a survivor told us, the Blues got here first and scavenged all of the equipment. And then they started to get infected.”

“Infected?” Caboose said. “What were they doing with the bodies?”

“Gross, shut up,” Church groaned.

“No really, what did they do with the bodies?”

“They said their men started acting erratically,” Wash said. “And for some reason they destroyed all of their radios and their own comm tower.”

“Okay, okay. That was definitely Omega.”

“You had a similar experience?”

“Yeah, similar? Exactly the same.”

“It all adds up then,” Wash said, frowning at the ship wreck. “Omega was the one who inherited that trait. During training they discovered he could move from suit to suit. For some reason he preferred Agent Texas. They tried to reassign him but he always made his way back to her somehow.”

“So where’s you A.I?”

Wash froze, the repressed memories of Epsilon suddenly shoving their way to the front of his mind. If his helmet had been off, the two simulation soldiers would have seen him go paler than snow. “I-I don’t have one. Any more. It’s a long story but it’s why I was chosen for this job.”

“Okay, okay, I knew I had heard your name before,” Church said. “You’re that guy who went nuts, right?”

Washington resisted the urge to punch Church. He’d worked long and hard to repress the memories of Epsilon. He thought he’d moved past the whispers of his ruined psyche. And just how Church knew that Epsilon had almost driven Wash insane was beyond even him.

Instead of punching Church, he merely said, “I didn’t do anything. My A.I … lost control of itself.”

“Right. It just happened to do that while it was inside your head.”

“Right.”

“We have a lot in common, Agent Washington,” Caboose said.

“No we don’t,” Wash said curtly. “And don’t ever say that again.”

 

*

 

“ _We found South soon after. She was being attacked by the Meta. While she tried to run, we fought the Meta. Caboose shot her down and the Meta used to armour enhancement he got off of Wyoming – time distortion – to escape. Meanwhile, I recovered Delta from South’s armour. Delta informed me of South’s plan to give him up to the Meta, and that she’d been the one who’d left North for dead. I transferred Delta to Caboose’s armour and shot South in the head._

_“South was a bitch who got jealous of her brother’s A.I. I learnt a lot later on that it was just an experiment, an experiment to see how one twin would react when they did not receive an A.I but the other twin did. The jealously… It tore the two of them apart. Just another part of the atrocities of Project Freelancer._

_“We tracked down the Meta and almost had it pinned down. Then the Reds – reformed like the Blues – showed up and fucked up the whole operation. The Meta stole Delta out of Caboose’s armour and left the poor kid for dead. I tried contacting command to get help. Simmons, one of the reds, started spewing bullshit at me. It was an obvious distraction and I ignored him. When I got back to the others, Church’s body was on the ground and the ghost of Church was standing in front of me._

_“That’s when I started piecing it together. I figured it all out in the end: Church was the Alpha A.I the A.Is used to obsess over. He had all the traits and the memories and he fitted in with the other A.I too perfectly._

_“When I infiltrated command and told him that, he didn’t believe me at first. But we both knew the Meta was coming for him. And we made a plan. The Reds and Blues escaped whilst I stayed behind to fight the Meta. I planted Church in my armour and activated him when the Meta attacked. I told command that I knew everything that they’d done to the A.I from the moment Epsilon had been implanted in me. Church entered the Meta with the other A.Is and I activated the EMP, killing the lot of them._

_“Command found me and Maine later. Project Freelancer was shut down, and everyone involved was imprisoned, which included me._

_“A while down the line, the chairman released the Meta and I to track down the Epsilon A.I so that it could be presented as evidence against the Director on a trial. In return, the Meta and I got to go free. We travelled back to Valhalla and kept Simmons and this idiot called Doc prisoner. The Reds ambushed us and Simmons escaped._

_“The Meta, Doc and I followed their trail through the desert. At one point, we dug up C.T’s armour after finding a recovery beacon. When I saw her armour, I felt so little. It was worse than after I saw North’s and York’s bodies. There was so little room left for grief in me that I just told the Meta to scavenge her for equipment. He noted how I didn’t care. He confronted me later on and told me that I’d changed. I just told him to look in a mirror._

_“We traced a recovery beacon to Sidewinder. Epsilon-Texas attacked us there, and almost got away. But, we’d found the Epsilon unit in the desert and the Meta had converted it into a capture unit. We trapped Texas inside and we were about to turn her in when the Meta betrayed me._

_“He was kicking our asses until the Reds and Blues showed up. We started to get one up on the Meta, but I was down. Bullets were buried in my chest and there was a wound in my stomach. I blacked out for the rest of the fight, but I woke up with Doc hanging over me. Somehow, he’d managed to heal me. And, without offering an explanation, he shoved Church’s armour in my face and told me to put it on.”_

*

 

He just stared at the pile of armour on the floor.

At some point during his trip to la-la-land, he’d been dragged into the deserted base at Sidewinder. He was out of his own armour, which was covering someone else’s body in the corner. Bandages were wrapped around his chest and stomach and the ache from the multiple wounds made it difficult to sit up without wincing.

Doc stood over Wash, waving Church’s old helmet in his face. “Put it on.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Don’t ask questions. Just do it.”

Wash frowned. “Where’s Church?”

“He went into the Epsilon unit after Texas. The thing died seconds later. He’s trapped there now. Get the armour on.”

Wash clumsily fitted the armour into place whilst Doc watched. When Wash cursed from the pain of his wounds as he tried to fit on his shoulder pads and chest piece, Doc stepped forwards to help. The two of them worked together in silence whilst familiar voices shouted outside.

“What’s going on?” Wash asked as he pulled Church’s helmet on.

“The UNSC Police are on their way,” Doc said. “Because of what’s happened here, they’d probably arrest you. We’re going to make it seem like you’re dead. You’re Church now, if they ask.”

“But –“

“You guys done in there?” an unfamiliar voice shouted.

“We’re coming out now,” Doc called back.

Wash followed Doc out into the snow, rubbing at his sore chest. He stopped dead when he saw that the Reds and Blues were stood in a semicircle in the entrance. Doc moved to stand beside Simmons, shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably. Wash looked at each person in turn, frowning at them from beneath his helmet.

“So this is the psycho you want to keep?” the guy who’d shouted – a guy in turquoise armour – asked Caboose.

“Yes,” Caboose said excitedly. “He looks just like Church.”

“That’s because he’s wearing his armour, moron.”

“What’s going on?” Wash asked. “Who are you?”

“Oh, this is Tucker,” Caboose said. “He does not like you.”

“I see that.”

“For the record, the armour thing was not my idea,” Tucker said, stepping forwards. He was a lot taller than Wash was. Wash would have to stand on his tiptoes in order to reach Tucker’s nose. “If it were up to me, we probably would’ve left you after all the shit you’ve done.”

“But, he did help us,” Caboose said.

“He fucking shot Donut!” Tucker shouted, turning to face Caboose. “Did you forget that?”

Caboose didn’t answer. The Reds were staring at the ground.

Tucker swore beneath his breath and stomped away. Shaking with anger, Wash couldn’t help but shout, “Just leave me to fucking die next time. I’d rather be dead than deal with your shit.”

Tucker stopped dead. The Reds all started backing up. Caboose skittered back when Tucker tore off his helmet and charged back at Wash, shoving the Freelancer back and almost knocking him on his ass. “Are you actually that fucking insensitive? Donut’s dead! Church is as good as dead! Don’t get me started on the shit you put Doc through.”

“You know what, Tucker?” Wash said, pulling off his own helmet. “Fuck you. If you had been in my position – if you had been through half the shit I have – you would have done the same fucking things.”

“Actually, I wouldn’t have done those things. You know why? I’m not a complete fucking psychopath!”

Wash didn’t even know he’d thrown the punch until Tucker was reeling back, blood already flowing from his nose. Tucker dived for Wash but the Reds and Doc ran forwards, struggling to keep both Wash and Tucker from beating each other up. Tucker spat at Wash, fighting against Grif and Simmons.

“See?” he said to them. “Psychopath. Can’t go ten minutes without seeing blood.”

Wash shoved Doc and Sarge away. They moved forwards to try and restrain him again but he pushed past them and stalked towards the edge of the cliff, throwing Church’s helmet down angrily as he did.

He stopped at the edge, sighing and looking down into the water. Before he’d blacked out, he’d given Sarge a tow cable that was attached to a downed warthog. He’d watched as Sarge moved towards the Meta, firing round after round from his shotgun. The Meta moved forwards and picked Sarge up by the throat. Sarge attached the tow cable to the Meta’s armour and Grif and Simmons pushed the warthog off of the cliff, dragging the Meta down with it.

Maine was gone. Maine had been Washington’s last friend. Even though he’d become a monster, he was still Wash’s last friend. Everyone was gone now. Maine, North, York, C.T, Carolina… _Everyone._ He was the last one left alive and he was stuck pretending to be the moronic leader of a group of idiots, most of which hated his guts. He was pretty sure the only person who even remotely liked Wash was Caboose.

Tears sprung to his eyes without warning. He tried wiping them away, tried to get himself to stop crying, but it was hard to stop once he’d started. So he stood at the edge of the cliff with his hand over his mouth and tears running down his face. He didn’t hear Doc walk up behind him, and jumped out of his skin when Doc rested a hand on his shoulder.

“You doing okay?” he asked softly.

“I’m fine,” Wash croaked.

“But –“

“I said, I’m _fine,_ ” Wash said through gritted teeth. Doc stammered for a couple of seconds before he let go of Wash’s shoulder. He held out Church’s helmet, which Wash took off of him and put back on. “This didn’t happen.”

“My lips are sealed,” Doc said. “And, by the way, if you ever want to talk I’m here.”

Wash started to walk away when he stopped, half turned to Doc and said, “Thanks.”

 

*

 

_“So I officially became a member of Blue team. I pretended to be Church, and the guys acted like they’d managed to kill me, as well as Texas and Maine. We got off scot free and stole two airships to get back home. We made it back, but we didn’t spend too long back there.”_

*

 

They’d barely even landed in Valhalla when all of their instruments went haywire. All of their electronics died at once and all of the vehicles cut off. Washington knew it was an EMP that had made everything freak out and shut down. The Reds set off in a tirade of curses when their jeeps stopped working. Tucker was swearing to himself as he popped the hood on jeep and tried to fix it.

“It’s not going to be moving for a while,” Wash said, leaning against the side of the jeep. “That was an EMP that short-circuited everything. Everything will be down until –“

“Shut up, okay,” Tucker said, head disappearing under the bonnet. “I know what I’m doing –“

“Oh great,” Wash said sarcastically. “Good to know that we’re in competent hands.”

“You know what, fuck –“

“Oh, shut up,” Grif said, walking over. “You two are like an old married couple.”

“We are –“

“You clearly have some unresolved sexual tension going on.”

“What?!” Wash spluttered. “W-We don’t –“

“Sorry, but he’s not my type,” Tucker said, remerging from the bonnet. “I prefer guys who aren’t as scrawny or freckled as him.”

“I am not –“

“Shut up!” Grif shouted. “Jesus, you’re giving me a headache.”

“You wouldn’t be getting a headache if we’d just left him to rot,” Tucker said, going back to the engine.

“I’m starting to wish you had,” Wash said, slamming the side of the jeep.

He stomped off, ignoring Tucker, who was cursing him to high heavens. He pulled his helmet off as he walked away, rubbing at his itching eyes. Honestly, dealing with Tucker was a lot worse than dealing with Caboose. Tucker just _hated_ him and, to be fair, Wash returned a lot of that hate because Tucker was just infuriating.

“Fucking brilliant,” Wash muttered, coming to a stop at that water’s edge. “Stuck with these guys.” He barely even had time to sigh when he heard gunshots coming from where they’d crashed.

“What now?” he shouted, shoving his helmet back on and running back to the Reds and Blues.

The Reds and Blues were fighting a figure in turquoise armour. Wash thought it was Tucker that they were fighting, until he realised the figure was kicking their asses. There was no way Tucker could take all of them on at once. Tucker wasn’t that good.

Washington ran down the hill towards the group, pulling his pistol from his holster and shooting at the person who was attacking. The figure knocked Caboose on his ass and took out Grif before turning to face Washington, whose heart dropped into his stomach at the sight of the Recon helmet. Only one person had that helmet and that armour colour, and that was Carolina.

So all he could do was stand and watch as Carolina stalked towards him and punched him straight in his visor, knocking him on his ass. She straddled his hips and continued to punch at his helmet until it flew off from the force of her punches. She punched him once more before she stopped, staring at Wash’s face.

“No way,” Carolina muttered before she fell back, scrambling away as Wash sat up and wiped at his bloody nose. “No fucking way. I thought you were dead.”

“I could say the same to you,” Wash said, standing and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Ow.”

“I won’t say sorry,” Carolina said, standing and brushing her armour off. “Your guys attacked me first when all I wanted to do was talk.”

“Why are you here?” Wash asked. “Not like I’m not happy to see you but why are you here?”

“I’ll explain when your guys pull themselves together. I don’t feel like repeating myself over and over again, especially with a story as long as the one I’m about to tell. Go tell your guys not to shoot at me anymore. That turquoise one seems to have a problem in particular.”

Wash wanted to ask her a million questions. One of the things he wanted to do most was hug her, because he’d honestly thought that she’d been dead for years. But she wouldn’t answer any of his questions and she’d probably punch him if he tried to hug her, so he just made his way over to the Reds and Blues and explained who Carolina was whilst he helped Caboose to his feet.

“So now we have two psychos?” Tucker asked, crossing his arms over his chest. “Perfect.”

“I think you need to shut up,” Wash growled.

“Why don’t you make me?”

“Can it,” Carolina said, walking over. She stood next to Wash and rested her hand on her hip. “I don’t need you two fighting when I have a mission to do.”

“What mission?” Wash asked. “You never mentioned a mission.”

“I’m going after the Director.”

Wash stared at her, his nosebleed, his annoyance at Tucker and his confusion forgotten in light of this information. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought of tracking down the Director himself, as the guy had gone missing after Project Freelancer fell and needed to be held accountable for what he’d done to them. All of his crimes were going unpunished, and no one could seem to find him.

But going after the Director would lead to nothing but dead ends. Everyone had been looking for him for months – maybe longer – but he’d vanished off of the face of the earth, leaving behind nothing but traces that lead to nothing. And why now? Why would Carolina, after all of her years of pretending to be dead, come back to exact her revenge now? Was it the right time? Or had she been preparing herself this whole time?

“The Director?” he repeated, his voice croaky.

“Yes.”

“B-But –“

“But what, Wash? Don’t you want payback for all the things he did? Don’t you want revenge for Connie, for Maine, for York and the Twins? For what he did to you?”

Wash stared at the ground. “I do, but –“

“What’s the problem? You and I both want revenge. And we can get it.”

“But he hasn’t been seen in years, Carolina. And there are no traces of him left. We’ve got no way of finding him.”

“We have one.” Carolina scooped his helmet up off of the ground. “We have the Epsilon unit.”

Wash frowned. “But the capture unit was fried. Epsilon was trapped inside.”

“We can get him out. I know how to get him out. And I know that the UNSC took him back to the archives. Now, we can break through their defences with these simulation troopers and get in to the unit and break him out. Epsilon has all of the Director’s memories, as the Alpha A.I was based off of the Director himself. You know full well that the fragment Epsilon was the Director’s memories. If we can get to him, we might have some clue on how to find the Director.”

“Hang on a minute,” Tucker said, stepping forwards. “Who said we’d help you guys? Since you’re both Freelancers, why don’t you take off and cause shit by yourselves. At least you’ll get _him_ – “ Tucker gestured to Washington “ – off of our hands.”

“Listen here, Tucker –“

“You’re going to help me because I know that Epsilon was your friend,” Carolina said, placing a hand on Wash’s chest and stopping him from walking towards Tucker. “I’ve been tracking all of you for a while now. Epsilon was your friend. Don’t you want to get him back?”

That made them consider it and, before Wash knew what was happening, they were getting ready to move out. Carolina revealed that it had been her who’d set off the EMP in case the Reds and Blues tried to escape when she confronted them. It took hours to get their equipment running again, and Washington ended up in the same jeep as Carolina whilst Tucker and Caboose rode together. The Reds took the last jeep. Doc was refused to come with them, using his pacifism to get out of the obvious fights that were coming up.

Wash drove and Carolina sat beside him in silence. When he couldn’t stand the silence anymore, he asked, “How did you survive?”

“Hm?”

“Everyone assumed you died after the _Mother of Invention_ crashed. They saw the Meta toss you off of a cliff. How did you survive?”

“The grappling hook of mine didn’t just let you escape from a nuclear bomb.”

“So where have you been? You go missing for years and only just turn up now to force a group of ragtag idiots to come with you after the Director?”

“I was waiting for the right time. I thought about approaching York, and then he was obviously killed. Tex and Wyoming were never an option. I tried to go after the twins, and then South let North get killed and you killed South –“

“ _Caboose_ killed South.”

“I’m not stupid, Wash. I’ve been tracking you for years. It may say Caboose on record, but I know full well that it was you.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah, ‘ah’. Anyway, I was going to ask you. Then you shut down the whole project and ended up in prison. I waited until you got out, only to find out that you’d gone and teamed up with the Meta. And I have to say, what were you thinking?”

“Put yourself in my position.” Wash glared at the road ahead. “Facing imprisonment for the rest of my life unless I retrieved the Epsilon unit. Life in prison, for following orders. I’ve been stabbed in the back so many times that I was getting desperate for a way out. So when the Chairman offered to let me go in exchange for Epsilon, how could I say no?”

“Still, you killed people, Wash.” Wash was silent for several moments before Carolina carried on. “Anyway, after those idiots killed the Meta and let you join their team, I thought I’d finally make my move. And here we are.”

“Is there anyone else pretending to be dead that I should know about?” Wash asked, refusing to let himself be shocked anymore.

“No one. It’s just us now. And I’m certain of that.”

“Good to know.”

 

*

 

_“We busted Epsilon out of the archives and set off on our merry adventure to try and find the Director. We followed lead after lead and found nothing. We eventually ended up back at Valhalla, but Carolina wanted to push on. She was changed. Driven and angry. She didn’t care about the Reds and Blues at all. All she wanted was to find the Director and get her revenge. She didn’t care about the strain she was putting on the Reds and Blues in her attempt to find him._

_“She was ready to make us leave, until the Reds and Blues, who’d been following her orders to a T, said no.”_

*

 

They’d returned to Valhalla to find that Doc was still there. Donut, who’d been shot by Wash back when he was teamed with the Meta, was there too, still alive since Doc had been seeing to him. Wash and Tucker’s relationship was finally improving to the point where they could stand to be within ten feet of each other. Constant bickering turned to harmless banter, and it actually improved Caboose’s morale to see them getting along.

Carolina and Epsilon had the two teams gather in the Holographic Projection Room beneath Red base so that they could speak to them. Tucker seemed amazed at the fact that the Reds had managed to build the room until Grif informed them that Lopez, the robot on Red team, had built the room.

Epsilon and Carolina explained how they’d narrowed the Director’s location to one of three bases. And then they’d said, “We need to be ready for anything.” The word ‘we’ made Washington frown beneath his helmet. All Carolina had talked about was _finding_ the Director. The Reds and Blues were not to be involved any further than that.

“So, let’s go over the plan,” Carolina said.

“What plan?” Tucker asked.

“The plan to take down the Director.”

Wash noticed Grif and Simmons glance at each other.

“Uh, I thought the plan was that we help you _find_ the Director,” Grif said.

“Yeah, and now we’ve found him,” Simmons said. “Good job everyone. Way to hustle out there.”

“The plan changed,” Carolina said.

“So then what exactly is the plan?” Wash asked, resting his hands on his hips.

“Infiltrate the facility and neutralize all hostiles.”

“Right, what’s our plan though?” Grif asked, sounding more nervous by the second.

“That is your plan. I’m counting on all of you.”

“But you said we’re the worst soldiers you’ve ever met! And you’re right! You’re very perceptive.”

“Look! I just need enough time to get to the Director.”

“So then we’re just a distraction?” Wash spat.

“No, Wash, you’re on lock duty,” Carolina said, facing him. “I need you with me.”

“Um, we have to fight the bad guys by ourselves?” Caboose asked.

“Fuck that,” Tucker said.

“Yeah, Carolina,” Wash said, rubbing the back his helmet, “Maybe I should stick with the others –“

“Leave personnel decisions to me, Agent Washington!”

He clenched his fists.

“Look, will you guys quit complaining and do something for once?” Epsilon asked exasperatedly.

“Son, are you forgetting we saved your sorry ghost ass from the military?” Sarge said.

“Yeah, we almost died trying to save you!” Simmons shouted.

“Oh, boo hoo,” Epsilon growled. “Why don’t you come back when you’re on you second or third life; then we’ll compare notes.”

There was a pause and Washington stared at Epsilon, shocked that he would say such a thing to the people he supposedly called friends before Grif said, “Wow. Fuck off, Blue.” He turned and started to walk away.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Carolina called angrily.

“I’m going home,” Grif called back, not stopping.

“Oh, that’s great Grif!” Epsilon shouted. “We can always count on you to duck out when there’s work to do.”

“Well you can count me out too,” Sarge grunted.

“What?” Carolina sounded shocked.

“Don’t get me wrong, busting into a military base on a rescue mission is a lot of fun. But I’m not getting turned into Swiss cheese just so the two of you can finish some personal vendetta. This ain’t our fight.”

“Took the words right out of my mouth, sir,” Simmons spat.

“Both of you, be quiet!” Carolina hissed.

“Dude, this is bullshit,” Tucker said.

“Tucker!” Epsilon shouted.

“Be quiet! That’s an order!” Carolina said.

“Well guess what, psycho? I don’t take orders from you anymore!”

“Well, what about now?” Carolina raised her rifle, aiming right at Tucker.

Washington saw red. Tucker was his team mate. Tucker was his _friend_. And Carolina had no right to boss around his friends. She had no right to threaten them either. He didn’t care for the fact that they’d known each other for years. He just raised his own rifle and surged forwards, pressing the barrel against the former Freelancer’s head.

“Don’t do that,” he growled.

“Wash, what are you doing?” Carolina hissed.

“Protecting my friends. Now lower the weapon.”

“You’re siding with them?” Carolina asked as she lowered his rifle.

“Wash, I don’t understand,” Epsilon said. “We found the Director! We can make him pay! This is what we wanted.”

Wash lowered his weapon. He realised his hands were shaking and that his breathing was shallow. “All I want is for you to leave. I’ve been responsible for enough of their problems in the past, and I’ll be dammed before I let you cause anymore.” He started to walk back to the Blues.

“So that’s it?” Epsilon asked. “You’re just gonna turn your back on us?”

“Epsilon, I know –“

“No, you’re right. Guess I should’ve seen that one coming. It’s not exactly like you’re new to the concept, is it?”

Wash stopped dead, his back to Epsilon and his eyes wide. He clenched his fists, resisting the urge to swear and curse the stupid A.I to the high heavens.

“That’s a little harsh,” Sarge said, moving over to rest a hand on Wash’s shoulder.

“But you guys,” Epsilon said angrily, looking at the Reds and Blues in turn. “After all the shit you put me through I really thought you’d have my back.”

“Us?” Grif asked, gesturing to himself. “What the hell did we ever do?”

“You shot me through the head!” Epsilon bellowed. He started to grow, growing until he was five times the size of a normal human, bellowing all the while. “You put a bomb in my gut! You killed me with my own damn tank, and that’s just how we met!”

“Church, calm down!” Tucker shouted as everyone stared up at Epsilon in shock. “What’s your problem?”

 “YOU’RE MY PROBLEM! YOU’VE ALWAYS BEEN MY PROBLEM! EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU IS JUST A PROBLEM I HAVE TO DEAL WITH ON A DAILY BASIS!”

Wash knew Epsilon had gone too far. He stood far behind his friend, but he could see Tucker’s hands shaking horribly. He moved forwards to rest a hand on Tucker’s shoulders, but Tucker clenched his fists and turned away from Epsilon, who was shrinking down to a normal size again, and marched away, refusing to look back.

“Guys…”

Sarge looked to both Grif and Simmons, who nodded at him before the three of them left the room.

“Guys, wait a minute.”

Epsilon and Wash looked to Caboose, who was shaking like Tucker had been. Wash could hear the small sniffles coming from Caboose. It was several moments before Caboose finally turned his back on Epsilon and walked away.

“Caboose…”

“Forget it Church,” Carolina said, watching as Caboose silently left the room. “We don’t need them.”

Wash pulled off his helmet, staring down at the orange visor before he sighed through his nose and looked back at Carolina over his shoulder. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Carolina, but you better figure out the difference between your enemies and your friends.”

He left the room without another word.

 

*

 

_“We were all so angry and hurt after that. Carolina and Epsilon were long gone before we finally decided to go after them. We followed them to the facility where the Director was hiding, only to find Carolina trying to fight off 100 Tex robots by herself. We jumped into the fight too, but it was Epsilon who finally took the robots down, infiltrating the heads of the robots and getting them to shut down._

_“Carolina and Epsilon went after the Director. Soon after, they returned and we were picked up by the UNSC. The Reds and Blues were going to go back to Blood Gulch, their original base. But, the ship crash landed on an unknown planet before we could make it back. It, uh… may have partially been my fault. I mean, I knocked a cable out of the wall, but that couldn’t have been the only thing that brought the ship down. One cable shouldn’t have brought it down._

_“We set up camps near the crash site. The ship had been torn in two as it had crashed, and we had no idea where the other half was. So we just did what we could and built a comm tower from the wreckage. Things seemed to be moving along until…_

_“Well, until Carolina and Epsilon abandoned us.”_

*

 

The last time he’d seen the two of them, they’d been stood at the top of the cliff that overlooked the crash site and the camps. They’d gone up there to talk about something, but now Washington couldn’t see them. Caboose had told Tucker that he couldn’t find the two of them. Washington assumed they were just somewhere else in the canyon, but he was starting to get worried.

“Is Church back yet?” Caboose asked, eating his rations.

“Not yet,” Wash said, constantly watching the door to the base in case Carolina and Epsilon walked back in.

“Should we go out and look for them?” Tucker asked. He was leaning on the counter next to Wash, his helmet on the counter behind him. Wash was always shocked when Tucker took his helmet off, as the guy looked a lot older and mature than he sounded. He had long black hair fashioned into dreadlocks, which he tied back off of his face. His eyebrows were thick and two scars stretched from the left side of his mouth up to the middle of his cheek.

“Later,” Wash said, rubbing at his own scar above his eyebrow. “I need to take these rations over to the Reds before Grif raids the stock. We’ll go when I get back.”

He held true to his word and the three of them set off when he got back. They’d taken off their armour, but still wore the guards over their hands and shins and their helmets attached to their belts. They trekked up to the top of the cliff to look for Carolina and Epsilon and found something worse.

Epsilon’s sniper rifle had been left on the cliff’s edge, and there was a little tape on the ground next to it. Wash knelt down and picked the little tape up. The front of the tape said ‘ _To Caboose, Tucker and Wash_ ’ in sloppy writing.

Caboose’s lower lip was trembling as he looked at the sniper rifle. “He left…”

“Caboose –“

“He left us.”

“He left a tape for us,” Wash said, standing up again. “We should… We should listen to it.”

They traipsed back down to the base and slotted the tape into the console to listen to it. It took a few seconds to start working, but it eventually crackled to life.

“ _H-Hey guys._ ” It was Epsilon’s voice, breaking up between the static. “ _Carolina does-doesn’t know I’m making this so-so I have to be quick. I, uh… I just want to say sorry for leaving on such sh-short not-notice. Totally not my plan. Any-Anyway, we’re going after this group of guys who got the-their paws on some military equipment. I don’t know whe-when we’ll back – or if we ever come back – but, I just want to tell you guys to take care of yourselves. And… g-good luck._ ”

The tape ejected itself.

Caboose was shaking. He ran his hand through his hair, breathing heavily, before he turned and wandered off to his room without a word. His door slammed shut seconds later and Wash winced when he heard a strangled cry from the room. Tucker glared at the tape before he picked it up and threw it against the wall with a shout. Wash winced again when he the tape smashed into tiny pieces.

“Fucking asshole!” Tucker shouted, pacing backwards and forwards and gripping his hair tightly. “How could he do this to us? To _Caboose_? He didn’t even say goodbye!”

“I’m sure he had his reasons,” Wash said, staring at the remains of the tape.

“Oh yeah, his reason was the weapons Carolina wanted to go after. Yeah, that qualifies for leaving your best friends.”

“I’m just –“

“You’re just what, Wash? Trying to help? Trying to comfort us? Never been your strong point.”

“Look, I’m sorry,” Wash said, trying not to cower under Tucker’s glare. As much as he denied it, Tucker scared the crap out of him when he was angry. Tucker was a much bigger man and, boy, he had muscles. Wash had been on the end of a punch once before and he didn’t want to suffer another one. “I… I don’t know what to say. I’m just shocked that –“

“You’re only upset that Carolina left.”

Wash glared at Tucker. He clenched his fists and drew himself up as tall as he could. “Actually, I was going to say that I’m shocked that Epsilon would leave without saying goodbye, and that I feel sorry for Caboose. But, since you know me so well, I’ll let you speak for me from now on.”

He stomped away.

 

*

 

“ _Whatever friendship we’d started to build up was gone in light of Church leaving. I took charge of the Blues again and tried to train the two of them. But Caboose was depressed from Church’s disappearance and Tucker was being such a bitch about the drills. Everything I tried to do for them just went south quickly. And the tensions with the Reds just started to mount up again. Eventually, Tucker and I had probably our worst argument yet.”_

*

 

Washington had just gotten back from the crash site and found Tucker stood outside of blue base – not running drills like he should’ve been – and Simmons standing in the entrance to the base. The sight of Simmons was more than enough to make Wash annoyed, but, combined with Tucker not running his drills _again_ , it just tipped him over the edge of annoyed and into the canyon of anger.

“I hate my life,” Wash heard Tucker grumble as he walked over.

“Tucker!”

“You know what? I take it back. I hate everyone else’s lives. Wish they didn’t have ‘em. Oh my god, am I turning into Church?”

“Why aren’t you running drills?” Wash asked, coming to a stop in front of Tucker.

“How do you know I didn’t already finish them?”

“Because you’re not on the ground complaining about irritated nipples.”

“I’m telling you, my chest piece rubs right up against them. And not in a good way.”

Wash sighed and rubbed at his forehead, fighting the urge to shout. “Why do you refuse to take these things seriously?”

“Why can’t you just let us do our thing?”

“I’m trying to make sure you’re the best; that you’re ready for anything.”

“Why? Blue team was just fine with being mediocre until you came along. What the fuck are you so worried about?”

“It’s just a feeling. I can’t explain.”

“Really? Cause I bet I can. You’re a paranoid, ex-special ops guy who’s used to being betrayed on a weekly basis. Not much of a riddle, Wash. Hey, next do you want to figure out the mystery of why Caboose is not the team treasurer?”

Washington could feel his face going red beneath his helmet. “Oh, so we’re going there.”

“Oh-hoho bitch, I already went there, and I took pictures.”

“Oh, grrrrl,” Caboose said, appearing out of nowhere with his pet military assault droid (long story) Freckles by his side.

“Well, I can’t say I’m surprised, Lavernius.” Wash spat out Tucker’s first name. “You always have to get the last laugh, mister quick-witted, mister-sarcastic. If you spent as much time training as you do mouthing off, you could probably beat Freckles at arm wrestling.”

“Don’t be stupid! Freckles doesn’t have arms, he has guns.”

“And paws!” Caboose shouted giddily. “Freckles, shake!”

Freckles lifted one foot up and slammed it into the ground, making the ground and the base shake. Washington almost lost his footing and actually grabbed onto Tucker to stop himself from falling, something that made both him and Tucker disgusted.

“Get it?” Caboose called. “He shakes! It’s awesome!”

“Caboose!” Wash and Tucker shouted at the same time as the ground stopped shaking finally.

“Yeah, yeah, were still working on it,” Caboose muttered, looking up at Freckles.

“Oh, hey Wash,” Simmons said, running out of the base. “I didn’t know you were back?”

“What is… Why is he here?” Wash asked, getting more and more riled up by the second.

“I took the liberty of claiming the bunk closest to you,” Simmons said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“I don’t have time to deal with you right now, go away.”

“Eh heh, good one sir,” Simmons said, obviously not getting the point. Wash rolled his eyes beneath his helmet. “Oh hey, by the way, is it cool if I start calling you sir?”

“Why is he still here?” Wash asked Tucker.

“Beats me. If I were him, I’d be as far away from this base as possible.”

“You can call me Champ is you want,” Simmons was saying excitedly. “Or, you know, son.”

“Just ignore him,” Tucker said, obviously wanting to get back to the argument.

“Or Sir Junior.”

“We don’t need you protecting us,” Tucker said, ignoring Simmons.

“I know, that’s why I’m trying to help you!

“Help us with what, defending against attack? No one is going to attack us!”

“ATTACK!”

All three of them looked up and watched as Grif and Sarge drove over the hill in their jeep. They crashed directly into the boulder by the base and aimed their guns at the Blues.

“ _Enemy soldiers detected,_ ” Freckles said.

“Uh… good Freckles,” Caboose squeaked. “No murdering everyone.”

“I would like to take this opportunity to point out that this was not my idea,” Grif said as the two groups formed a standoff. “Whatsoever.”

“You have the worst timing,” Tucker said to the Reds.

“Stow it, thin mint,” Sarge growled, his shotgun aimed right at Wash. “We’re no longer fraternizing with the enemy.”

“’Thin mint’?” Tucker repeated, as if that was the most important thing from Sarge’s sentence.

“Now see, when he says ‘we’ imagine he’s only referring to himself,” Grif said, uncomfortable with the conflict. “Do not group us together.”

“Bitch, my armour’s aqua! I think.”

“What the hell are you two doing?” Wash asked.

“Uh, again, just him. I can’t stress this enough.”

“You made me believe that Reds and Blues can coexist,” Sarge said, “And that we can work together as one people, and that we can all get together and be… a little _purple._ ”

“We can! We are! Seriously, what the fuck is this about?” Wash asked.

“You kidnapped one of my men!”

All eyes went to Simmons, who said, “Who? Me?”

“He wasn’t kidnapped, dipshit,” Tucker said. “He came over here by himself! We can’t get him to leave.”

“Is this true, Simmons?”

“It’s not your fault, sir. It’s Grif’s.”

“What did I do?” Grif asked, sounding shocked.

“You’re fucking disgusting, Grif!”

“Well, yeah. But I’ve always been like that. Sarge was the one that decided to take half the base for himself.”

“Oh. Then I guess it is your fault sir.”

“Then that makes you a traitor!” Sarge bellowed, pointing his shotgun at Simmons instead of Wash.

“What?”

“ _Threat level increased._ ”

“Uh, yeah, no reason for panic,” Caboose said slowly. “Everything’s fine. Might anyone have a rolled up newspaper?”

“You weren’t kidnapped! You deliberately joined the enemy!” Sarge was shouting.

“But if he wasn’t kidnapped, that would mean we were never the enemy in the first place,” Tucker argued.

“Don’t try and confuse me with your words, shamrock!”

“I’M AQUA!”

“Tucker, calm down,” Wash said, an arm across Tucker’s chest to stop the other soldier from charging forwards.

“Me?” Tucker said, pushing Wash away angrily. “These guys roll up in a fucking assault jeep and you choose to yell at me?”

“Look, tensions are high –“

“No shit, Washington. I’m tired of you bossing us around.”

“Now is not the time.”

“You know, I disagree.” Tucker stepped up to Wash and towered over him. They were almost chest-to-chest. “We were having a talk when Tweedledee and Tweedle-fucking-idiot decided to interrupt, so let’s finish this.”

“There is nothing to finish!” Wash said, hands up in a defensive position in case Tucker started to throw punches.

“Are we intruding on some sort of lovers’ quarrel right now?” Grif asked, bemused.

“You are the worst thing to happen to this team since blue-boy over there decided to show up!”

The insult hurt so much that Washington barely registered what else was being said around him. Blood roared in his ears and he found that he was growling. So when Tucker said that he’d rather follow Caboose into battle than him, Wash placed his hands on Tucker’s chest and shoved him away with all the force his could muster, all while shouting, “Oh really? Then let’s make him the leader and see how much better off you are!”

“Well, I humbly accept your nomination and accept the position,” Caboose said.

“Shut up!” Wash and Tucker shouted at once.

“ _Do not talk back to your commanding officer._ ”

“Wash and I are having an argument,” Tucker shouted at Freckles. “I will be talking back to him. That’s how arguments work, you stupid fucking toaster!”

“ _Washington is not the commanding officer._ ”

“What?” Tucker and Wash said at the same time, forgetting their argument.

“ _In a unanimous decision by the Blue team, Caboose has been promoted to Blue leader. Captain Caboose is now your commanding officer. Do not talk back to your commanding officer._ ”

The group fell in silence, punctured only by Grif’s comment: “Oh fuck.”

 

*

 

“ _So, Caboose became Blue team leader. Our ‘rescue team’ showed up in the meantime, and it turned out to be Doc, Donut and the head of the old Red team robot. They hadn’t told the ship that’d brought them to wait, so we were still stuck on the planet. Caboose then made some changes to the team. I was supposed to be doing the rounds in the canyon whilst Simmons was to stay at the base and Tucker was set to repair the comm tower._

_“In order to get things back to the way they were, I went and found Caboose’s old helmet. He’d lost it during the crash and had had to use a Mark VI helmet ever since. I found his old Mark V helmet and repaired it for him. I gave it back to him along with this speech about me not being a better friend and that Caboose has to accept the fact that Church was gone, and that he’d used Freckles to replace Church. Caboose listened to me and gave command up to me again, as well as Freckles._

_“In the meantime, I’d … well, I’d made up with Tucker.”_

 

*

 

They’d said sorry, they’d explained their problems to each other – hell, Wash had even told Tucker about the time Carolina pulled him into a Pelican using a grappling hook attached to his balls! – and now they were trying to get the comm tower back online. In the heat of the day, both of them had removed their helmets, the top halves of their armour and under suits, leaving them in just the vests they wore beneath the under suits.

Wash frowned and bit his lip as he worked to try and get the comm tower back online, alternating between wiping away sweat and typing away furiously on the keyboard. He barely noticed that Tucker was staring until he looked to see what the other soldier was doing, going red when he saw that Tucker was just staring at his back and arms.

“What?” he spluttered.

“You’re _covered_ in freckles, man,” Tucker said, leaning against the console. “And scars too. Like, you have so many scars.”

“You have scars too,” Wash said, his eyes on the scars at Tucker’s cheek.

“These?” Tucker ran a hand over the two scars. “These were from when I was with Junior. We got into a bit of trouble and my helmet got knocked off. Ten seconds later, I’m keeling over with blood in my mouth and pain in my cheek.”

“They look cool.”

“Yours do too.” Tucker moved to stand beside Wash and Wash shivered when Tucker ran his cold fingers over the multiple circular scars he’d gotten from Sidewinder. “These look so cool. But, that one above your eye is a beauty. Where’d you get it?”

“During my Freelancer days,” Wash said. “A mission went bad. We lost all our soldiers and I was on my way back to the Pelican when some guy jumped me. He knocked off my helmet and, as I was trying to back up, he threw a knife at me. Lucky I’m alive, really.”

“Dude, with the amount of scars you’ve got, I’d say you got lucky more than a few times.” Tucker leaned against the console again, crossing his arms over his chest and looking Wash up and down again. “And I like a guy with scars. It’s hot.”

Wash froze, eyes glued to the screen of the console. The numbers that once made sense to him suddenly seemed to be a jumble of nonsense. He could feel Tucker’s eyes on him, waiting for some kind of reaction, but he just cleared his throat and carried on working, not even looking at Tucker when he said, “Check to see if it’s working now.”

Whilst Tucker had his back to him, he tried to gather his thoughts. It’d been years since a guy had said something like that to him, and, of course, it had to be Tucker who said it. Tucker, the huge flirt who could barely keep it in his pants, thought that guys with scars were ‘hot’. And he’d said it directly to Wash, a guy with scars. Wash would be lying if he said he didn’t find Tucker good-looking, or that his heart didn’t start racing when Tucker said that to him.

But he didn’t say anything for fear of Tucker just joking with him. He’d been hurt too many times to trust anyone anymore.

“Hey, Wash?” Tucker’s voice made him jump.

“Y-Yeah?”

“I figured out the problem?”

“What is it?”

“… It was just turned off.”

 

*

 

_“I thought that comment would be a one-off thing. But, it was Lavernius Tucker I was dealing with and boy, was he a flirt. After the whole scar thing, it became just little off-hand comments every so often. And I shouldn’t have, but I liked it when he made those off-hand compliments. So we suddenly went from being at each other’s throats to throwing these stupid comments back and forth._

_“And then Felix showed up.”_

*

 

They barely had time to react when the bullets started raining down on them. Washington shouted out, diving behind cover and dragging Tucker with him. Caboose was wandering around in plain sight of the attackers (that was partially Wash’s fault, as he’d fucked up when repairing Caboose’s old helmet and the visor no longer worked). Simmons dived behind one of the crates in front of the base.

Washington peered over the edge of his cover, frowning at the sight of the four soldiers in white who were shooting at them. He’d been under the impression that they’d crashed miles and miles away from any kind of life. Obviously not the case.

“Who the fuck are these guys?!” Tucker shouted.

“Why are we shooting off fireworks?” Caboose called over the noise. “Is it someone’s birthday?”

“Freckles, cover Caboose!” Wash shouted. The robot moved over and crouched in front of Caboose whilst Simmons stood up and shouted, “Stop shooting! We’re friendly!”

A shot flew past Simmons’s helmet, barely missing him. Simmons dived for cover again. “That’s the opposite of what I said!”

“Fuck this!” Tucker said, loading his rifle. He stood up and shot at the soldiers, managing to bring one of them down.

“Wait! We don’t know who they are!” Wash shouted at Tucker.

“They’re the guys who are gonna kill us if we don’t kill them first!”

Wash smacked the side of the metal plate they were crouched beside. “Fuck! Freckles, take them out!”

“ _Engaging targets._ ”

It only took three missiles to take out all of the remaining soldiers, and silence fell in the canyon when they died. Washington stood and took off his helmet, wiping at his eyes as Tucker ran forwards to examine the bodies. Wash heard footsteps and turned to watch the Reds run over.

“What in Sam Hill is goin’ on?” Sarge asked, coming to a stop in front of Wash.

“Who were those guys?” Grif asked, gesturing to the bodies.

“We don’t know,” Wash said as Tucker jogged over.

“They just showed up and started shooting,” Tucker said, his own helmet off and in his hand.

Lopez, the Red team’s robot who spoke nothing but Spanish, said something Wash didn’t understand, but Sarge replied with, “Shut up, Lopez. This isn’t the time for jokes,” which meant that he at least understood what was being said.

“We need to get inside,” Wash said, putting his helmet back on, “In case there’s more hiding in the –“

He heard the shot and turned to see where it came from when a guy in grey and orange armour with what looked like a hardlight shield jumped out of nowhere and deflected the shot that would’ve gone straight through Wash’s head.

“Run!” he shouted.

Simmons ran forwards, raising his gun. “There’s another one!”

There was another shot and the orange and grey soldier fell down with a shout, blood pouring from his leg. “SON OF A BITCH!”

“Wait, I’m confused, “ Simmons said.

“What are you doing?!” the downed soldier asked angrily, his hands gripping his bleeding leg. “I said run!”

“Excellent work, soldiers.”

They watched as the soldier walked towards them, appearing from the shadows with a sniper rifle in his hands. His voice was garbled and his armour was camouflage coloured. He was a towering and imposing person, easily a foot and a half taller than Washington.

“You killed my men,” the new guy said, resting his rifle against his shoulder. “I suppose that makes you the real deal.”

“Okay, now I’m really confused,” Simmons said.

“Quiet!” the new guy snapped. “All of you, come with me now.”

“And why would we do that?” Wash asked, clenching his fists. He didn’t much feel like cooperating with someone who’d tried shooting him in the head moments earlier.

“Because, if you don’t come now, I’ll have to take you later.”

“Fuck off!” the orange and grey guy said.

“You, shut your mouth and be glad I missed your head.”

“Oh my god, you’re such a douchebag!”

“Yeah, what he said!” Tucker inputted.

“This is your last chance,” the camouflage guy growled.

Wash looked over at Freckles and smirked. “Freckles!”

Freckles started to fire at the soldier, but the soldier suddenly vanished, using some obvious armour enhancement to cloak himself.

“Holy shit, did you see that?” Grif asked, pointing at the spot where the soldier had disappeared.

“No! Please describe it to me!” Caboose half-shouted, his visor still not working. “Use only small words!”

“Um, any of you guys know how to patch up a leg?” the orange and grey guy asked with a weak laugh.

“I’ll go get some orange juice,” Doc sighed, rushing off to red base.

“Wait, that’s a thing?”

 

*

 

“ _Doc patched up the new guy – Felix – and he explained that we’d crash landed on Chorus, a planet in the midst of a civil war. After the war, the UNSC all but forgot about Chorus. Free from UNSC control, the people of Chorus attempted to govern themselves but it soon developed into a civil war. Felix told us that he worked for the rebels – the New Republic – who were fighting against the Empire and the Federal army, and that’s who Locus, the camouflage guy, worked for._

_“Apparently, both the Feds and the New Republic knew who we were. Both sides wanted us to fight for them in the coming conflict, as we were considered to be some of the greatest soldiers in the galaxy for taking down Project Freelancer. We tried to explain that all we wanted was to leave and go home. I’d been in too many wars to give a shit about another one. Felix radioed in for extraction after that, and had us prepare for the coming attack._

_“Whilst the guys got to work, I had a chat with Felix.”_

*

 

Wash and Felix stood at the top of Blue base, watching as the Reds and Blues prepared. Felix stood behind Wash, and Wash could feel his eyes on him, watching him steadily.

“So, how bad is this?” Wash asked, his eyes on Tucker and Caboose.

“The man coming for us is named Locus,” Felix said, coming to stand beside Wash. “He’s a merc like me, except, ya’now… terrifying.”

“Locus?”

“Yep. Guy’s so far off the deep end he prefers to go by the name of his armour instead of the name his was born with.”

“That’s unsettling.”

“Oh, are you first name “Agent”, last name “Washington”? That’s so weird.”

“That’s just old habits.” Wash looked up at Felix. “And my last name _is_  Washington, as a matter of fact.”

“Oh, well… here’s to hoping more of your old habits kick in when he shows up. You know I thought there’d be more of you. Weren’t you with another Freelancer, and an A.I?”

Washington glared at the floor. “They disappeared not long after we crashed.”

“Sheesh, any idea where they went?”

“…No.”

“Hmm. Well, if it makes you feel better I haven’t heard anything about them over the radio. So… that’s probably good.”

“How was he able to cloak himself?”

“Huh?”

“Locus. He turned invisible. How?”

“The Federal Army’s got all sorts of fancy stuff. I got my light shield off a dead soldier.” To demonstrate, Felix turned his blue hardlight shield. “Shum!” He turned it off. “Wah! Pretty cool, huh?”

“It’s just that I’ve never seen that kind of equipment outside of Project Freelancer.” Washington’s mind went back to the amount of times he’d seen both Carolina and Texas use that clocking technique, and how the Twins used to use energy shields.

“Welcome to the future, Wash. Technology is incredible, and everyone uses it to kill each other.”

“Does that mean your guys have the same equipment?”

“I wish. The New Republic’s barely getting by with what they can,” Felix spat, kicking at something on the floor. “I don’t suppose you have any high-tech armour aboard that wreck, do ‘ya?”

“Plenty of armour, just nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Hm… Well, at least you can accessorize? Huh? Try a little colour combo? Mix it up?” When Wash did nothing but stare at him blankly, Felix sighed. “I-I’m sorry. I’m just trying to lighten the mood.”

“Actually,” Wash said, thinking about one particular set of armour on the ship, “I think I might indulge of some of those old habits you were talking about. Follow me.”

Washington started to walk off towards the crash site. Felix called after him before following, saying, “Man, you are just cryptic. Like all the time, do you realise that?”

 

*

 

Inside the ship, there was one entire hangar full of armour. Each set had a different colour combination and name attached to it. There were hundreds of sets of armour, but Washington was only looking for one set.

Felix whistled at the sight of the suits. “Nice. There’s enough armour in here for an entire army.”

“Take what you want,” Wash said, frowning as he tried to find the one set he’d come for. “No one else is gonna use these armour sets.”

“I’ll come back for them at a later date.”

“If we survive today.”

“You’re only proving that you really are melodramatic.”

“Shut up.”

Wash reached the end of the row and finally found the set he was looking for. He came to a stop and stared at the steel and yellow armour that he used to wear, suddenly overcome with memories of his Freelancer days. He hadn’t worn the armour since Sidewinder. It felt weird seeing it once more.

“This yours?” Felix asked, standing behind Wash.

“Yes. I used to wear this back in my Freelancer days.”

“This that old habit you talked about?”

“Yep.”

“Well, let’s hope it works. Suit up.”

 

*

 

“The black and yellow looks better than the blue and yellow,” Felix commented as Wash put his old helmet back on. “I think the duller colour suits your attitude.”

“Thanks,” Wash said sarcastically, looking down at his armour. It felt weird to be back in the old armour. There were so memories that came with it that he started feeling a little choked up, especially when he remembered that Maine had died the last time he’d worn this armour.

_Stop crying, moron._

“Let’s get back to the others,” Wash said, leaving Church’s armour in hangar and scooping up his battle rifle. “They should be ready by now.”

And they were. The area surrounding the Blue base was fortified and ready to take on any threat. The Reds and Blues, minus Sarge and Lopez, stood outside the Blue base, loading their guns and preparing themselves for the coming fight. Wash could hear Donut talking as he and Felix approached.

“Well, it just goes to show,” Donut was saying, “That with time, effort and a little bit of elbow grease, we really can achieve wonders.”

“We just spent hours turning this place into a warzone,” Tucker said, “And you made me hate it in one sentence.”

“It’s what he does,” Grif said.

“Donut’s got a point though,” Wash said as he came to a stop in front of the group. “I think we’re ready.”

“Oooh,” Donut said. “Back in black. Looks good, Wash.”

“Yeah, that really brings back memories,” Caboose said. It looked like Tucker had fixed his helmet properly. “Like when we first met. And then we met again and you shot Donut.”

“Good job, guys,” Wash said, looking at the fortified base. “This place looks good. And between the landmines, Freckles, and the tank… I don’t think anything can stand a chance against us.”

Right at that moment, a missile hit the side of the base.

“RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!” Sarge shouted, appearing at the top of the hill.

“Sarge?” Simmons said, looking up at Sarge.

“Oh shit, they’re here!” Grif shouted.

“Everyone, get ready!” Wash said.

“Wait! Something’s not right,” Felix said. “Locus wouldn’t attack like this!”

“Well, who else on this planet wants us dead?!” Tucker shouted.

At that moment, a robot that looked a lot like Freckles came charging over the hill after Sarge, shouting away in Spanish and firing at Sarge relentlessly. Freckles shot at the new robot, who turned out to be Lopez, just in a new, deadlier body. Wash watched the robot fight with wide eyes before he shook his head, remembering the imminent attack.

“Everyone, just calm down!” he shouted over the noise.

“Shit!” Felix shouted, powering up his shield and deflecting a shot from Locus, who’d begun his attack on the canyon whist the Reds and Blues were preoccupied with Lopez.

“Surrender now,” Locus said, “And I promise only to kill the mercenary.”

“Well, fuck,” Simmons muttered.

“You and what army?” Grif shouted.

When Wash saw the army of soldiers uncloak behind Locus, he felt the urge to punch something – possibly Grif – in the mouth.

“The Federal Army of Chorus,” Locus said and Wash could just hear the smile in his voice.

“Well, I guess I walked right into that one.”

“Looks like backup isn’t getting here in time!” Felix said, his eyes on the sky.

“Wash?” Tucker asked. “What’s the plan?”

Washington sighed through his nose and looked down at his rifle. It was too late to wait for the New Republic to show up, and he’d be dammed if he let the Reds and Blues go down without a fight. So he raised his rifle and aimed right for Locus’s head.

“ _Engaging target.”_

 

*

 

“ _We didn’t do well against the Feds. We held them off for a while, but we couldn’t hold them off forever. And I got injured in the attack._ ”

 

*

 

“All right, everyone together!” Wash shouted over the noise, desperately trying to pull his squad back into formation. “We can do this.”

He heard the shot, and he turned and saw the missile fly to him. His eyes widened and he was off of his feet in an instance, the heat of the exploding missile burning through his under suit and burning his skin. He could feel shrapnel embedded into his shoulder and he could feel the intense pain, but he couldn’t scream or shout as he fell. He just fell face first onto the ground, dazed by the pain.

Someone shouted his name. It sounded like Tucker, but he couldn’t look up to check. He rolled over onto his side, one hand going to his shredded shoulder when the missile hit him. His fingers came away dripping in blood. He looked from the blood on his fingers to the Reds and Blues fighting around him just in time to see Sarge get hit the same way he did, knocking the older man down.

He groaned and rolled over onto his back, staring up at the sky. His visor had cracked from the missile impact and was short-circuiting. The helmet had been jarred loose too. Wash blinked blearily, barely noticing the new soldiers popping up around him. His attention was only grabbed moments later when the Reds and Blues started to retreat, but did not stop to pick him or Sarge or Donut (who’d gone down before him).

Growling, he rolled over onto his front and pushed himself up, his helmet falling off as he did. He heard someone shout his name as he pushed himself into a standing position, staggering back slightly. He was unsteady on his feet and the world swam terribly. He looked down at the injury at his shoulder, which was looking a lot worse now that he could see it properly. One of his shoulder pads was dangling uselessly and part of his chest piece was falling away. He tore the two pieces off and tossed them aside as someone shouted his name again.

It was Tucker, and he was stood by the entrance to a cave that the Reds, Blues and the rebel soldiers were retreating into. Tucker was shouting to Wash to hurry up, to run to the tunnel, but Wash knew that there was no way in hell he’d make it. Tucker’s helmet was also off, and Wash could see his wide, fearful eyes. He blinked back tears, and looked to his surroundings, his heart dropping into his stomach at the sight of soldiers falling left and right around him. His eyes landed on Freckles and he knew immediately what he had to do.

“Freckles!”

The robot turned to him.

“ _Shake_.”

Freckles lifted one huge foot and stomped it into the ground with force than he had done the first time round. The ground shook and Wash grabbed onto the side of a crate to stop himself from falling down. The rocks above the cave entrance collapsed under the earthquake, sealing off the tunnel and preventing Locus from following the rebels. Washington looked at the cave entrance and breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that Tucker and the others were safe now.

Locus knocked him out.

 

*

 

He woke up in the back of an airship, a black bag over his head and handcuffs around his wrists. He groaned softly, reaching up to rub at his aching head when someone whacked at his hands and told him to be quiet. Wash frowned beneath his helmet, trying to remember what happened. Where was he? Where were the Reds and Blues? Why did his shoulder hurt so much?

And it all flooded back. He remembered it all right up to Locus knocking him out, and he figured that the Federal Army had taken him into custody. Judging from the groans coming from the seats across and next to him, he guessed he hadn’t been the only one who was taken prisoner. Hopefully, Donut and Sarge were there too. He hoped that some of the rebel soldiers had been left alive as well.

Wash sat in silence, doing his best to block out the pain of his shoulder and head. He focused on his surroundings, listening to a soldier pace backwards and forwards in front of him and the quiet chatter of someone’s radio. He gauged from sound alone that there were maybe twenty people sat down, and around six standing. He crossed his fingers and hoped that Donut and Sarge were amongst those numbers.

The airship finally landed and Wash was herded off of the ship with the others. He shuffled out of the ship into the hot sun and down what seemed to be a concrete runway. The hot sun disappeared, replaced instead by the comforting whirr of air-conditioning. They came to a stop and the bag and the handcuffs were finally removed.

He almost cried with relief when he saw the familiar back of Sarge’s head in front of him. He snuck a glance behind him and was relieved to see Donut standing just behind him, looking more than a little bruised up. The people in front of and behind Wash were the rebel soldiers who’d survived the canyon attack. Everyone had had their helmets taken away from them, and wounds had been patched up sloppily. Wash’s own wound was still bleeding. Blood had already stained the front of gauze bandages.

Locus stepped forwards, looking at each of the prisoners individually. His eyes settled on Wash and the tiniest of smirks crossed his face before he spoke to the group. “You will go through the door up ahead one by one. You will turn over your armour and you will be given a new uniform. Those who refuse will be shot on sight.”

So they trickled in one by one until Sarge was stood right outside the large, dirty steel doors. Sarge was clenching his fists tightly. Wash knew that Sarge’s pride would be hurt by having to give up his armour, but the man wasn’t so proud that he’d refuse. Even he knew when to surrender. Wash didn’t hear a gunshot when Sarge entered the room, which meant his assumption had been right. He stepped up next.

Armour littered the floor. Mismatched bits and pieces that belonged to soldiers who were now prisoners of war. Sarge’s own armour stood out amongst the tan coloured armour of the rebels. A soldier stood at a table in the midst of the armour, piles of filthy clothes and shoes on the table before him.

“Take it off,” the soldier said, his tone conveying his boredom. Wash swallowed his pride and stripped down to the vest and boxers he wore beneath his under suit, tossing the armour and suit aside. The soldier threw a pair of torn black pants and a grey shirt at him, and kicked a pair of boots that looked at least a size too big towards him. Wash dressed as quickly as he could and he was lead out of the room via the door opposite the way he came in.

On the other side were cells. Rows and rows of cells. Many of the cells were filled with soldiers who’d not been a part of the twenty or so who’d just come in, meaning this wasn’t the Feds’ first haul of prisoners. Wash was lead down the grimy corridor to a cell half-way down. Sarge already stood inside and perked up when he saw that Wash was to be his cellmate. The door slammed shut behind Wash but opened up again soon when Donut was ushered in.

“What’s the plan now, Wash?” Donut asked as the guards moved onto the next cell. He sat down on the only bed in the cell, rubbing at his wound. “Tell me you have a plan.”

“I don’t,” Wash growled, picking at the frayed hem of his shirt.

“Well, you’d better come up with one soon,” Sarge grunted. “I don’t plan on dying as a prisoner.”

“Me neither.”

 

*

 

“ _I knew I had to get Sarge and Donut out of there. Being locked away in a cell just wasn’t right for them. I’d dealt with being locked up in the past and I could handle it. But I knew that it would break Sarge and Donut. I was all out of escape plans, but I knew that Tucker and the others would be looking for us. There was no way they’d just leave us. So I prayed that they would come up with some ingenious plan to bust us out. In case they didn’t, I tried thinking up of a few of my own._

_“In the meantime, we were questioned.”_

*

 

Each soldier who’d been captured was taken for questioning individually. Locus would show up with his men and take a different soldier each day until he wheedled the pool of victims down to Wash, Sarge and Donut. Then he took Sarge, and the older man came back with a broken rib. Donut came back with a broken nose and a snapped wrist. And then it was Wash’s turn.

Out of everyone, it had to be him to go last. He could see Locus doing that on purpose. Locus seemed to know that he was the kind of person who’d rather take the beatings than watch others suffer. He’d pleaded with the guards many times, offering himself up in the place of the young soldiers or the two Reds. His pleas fell upon deaf ears, and he was forced to watch the rebels and the Reds suffer without being able to do anything about it.

It was finally his turn, and he had a feeling that Locus would be going all out on him. But when the guards came, they didn’t just take him: they dragged Sarge and Donut along too. Wash didn’t dare question it. It was probably some part of Locus’s fucked up mind-game.

The room they were taken to was a dark and dingy room with dripping pipes lining the walls and ceilings and blood on the floor. A single chair sat in the middle of the room, and Wash was made to sit in it, his hands handcuffed to the back. Sarge and Donut were handcuffed to the pipes in one corner of the room, the two guards flanking them. Locus was waiting for Wash in the room, standing in the shadows and twirling a knife in his hands.

“Nice set up,” Wash commented, his eyes on the blood and on the single, swinging light above his head. “A little too cliché for me, but nice. You really nail the 21st century Mexican Mafia look.”

A punch to the face had him spitting blood. He saw Donut wince.

“You talk too much,” Locus growled, dragging his knife along Wash’s cheek slowly. “Maybe you can be the one to give me my answers.”

“Depends on the questions.”

“Where is the New Republic’s base?”

“How should I know?”

Another punch.

“Where is Vanessa Kimball?”

“Never heard of her.”

Two punches this time.

“My patience is wearing thin already, Agent Washington.” Locus grabbed the front of Wash’s filthy shirt and forced the Freelancer to look at his helmet. “I’ve been doing this for the last two months and I’ve yet to get my answers. My superiors said to be gentle, but I think the time for gentleness is past.”

“Fuck you,” Wash spat, getting blood onto Locus’s helmet.

He screamed as the knife entered his left thigh. White hot pain shot up and down his leg, drawing tears from him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw both of the Reds leap forwards as if to help him. They were both knocked back. Wash was panting, staring up at the ceiling as he tried to tune out the pain of the wound.

Locus made a deep, guttural sound that might’ve been a laugh. “Ready to talk now?”

“About what?” Wash asked with a weak laugh. “The sky? The flowers? Or perhaps you’d like me to spill my entire existence, pass on the pretty fucking heavy weight of living onto you?”

Locus replied by beating him to a bloody pulp.

 

*

 

“ _Locus broke my cheekbone, four fingers and my shoulder during the questioning, as well as giving me some more impressive scars for Tucker to admire. There’s one of my chest that Locus really went to town with. He started babbling on about me being a backstabber at one point – probably trying to guilt trip me into talking – but I didn’t bit the bait. He carved the word ‘Traitor’ into my chest, as if I needed the daily reminder._

_“Anyway, the questioning lasted all day before Locus finally had enough and decided he wasn’t going to get anything out of us. He had us sent back to our cell, where Donut just sat on the bed and cried whilst Sarge tried to help me set my shoulder. All Donut could do most days was cry, which was more than enough to make my heart ache. The kid had already been through so much shit – some caused by me – and he’d finally broke. It really hurt to see all that cheerful optimism disappear. But war does shit to people. It changes them, sometimes for the worse._

_“Thankfully, we were saved the next day.”_

 

*

 

The squealing of alarms woke him up. Wash sat up groggily, rubbing at his sore back. All around him, soldiers were appearing at the doors to their cells, rubbing their eyes and frowning at the sight of the corridor being bathed in red lights. The alarms continued to scream until Wash’s eardrums felt as if they were going to pop. And then there was the monotonous voice of a woman, announcing, “Incoming rebel attack. All personnel to battle stations.”

“Rebel attack?” one of the soldiers in the adjoining cells repeated.

“Are we getting saved?” a girl asked, gripping the bars of her cell tightly.

“WE’RE GETTING RESCUED!” someone further down shouted. Their shout was accompanied by cheers from every cell. Even Wash couldn’t help but smile at the prospect. Several Feds ran past, glaring at the sight of the cheering rebels. They passed by Wash’s cell and saw Donut jumping from foot to foot, cheering happily. One of them reached forwards and grabbed the front of Donut’s shirt. Everyone fell silent as the guard raised his club. Wash found himself diving forwards, but there was a gunshot and the soldier fell dead to the ground just as Wash pulled Donut from his grip.

There were six more shots, and the remaining soldiers went down. Everything fell silent for a second before a person in turquoise armour moved to stand in front of the entrance to the cell.

“Carolina?” Wash asked, gaping at the sight of his fellow Freelancer.

“You look like shit,” Carolina said, unlocking the cell. “I told Locus to be gentle. Obviously didn’t listen to me.”

Wash’s hand was at her throat in seconds, and he pushed back against the wall of the cell. Carolina didn’t fight back. She merely accepted the fact that Wash was pooling all of his anger and his strength into slamming her into the wall, snarling in her face.

“You were working with them?” he growled, ignoring the pain from his cheek and shoulder as he did.

“They didn’t know who I was,” Carolina said, her hands on Wash’s wrist. “I kept you guys alive by pretending to be some high-level officer. And I kept Locus in line as best as I could.”

“So you left us in that canyon and didn’t even think to warn us of the civil war going on?”

“I had no way to get out and no way to get a hold of you guys. What more do you want me to say, Wash?”

“A sorry might be nice,” Wash said, before he sighed and let her go. “But that’s not your style, is it?”

“Wash –“

“Save it. All I care about it getting these rebels out of here. I think they want to go home.”

Carolina looked as if she was about to press the issue further but instead rifled through the pockets of the dead soldiers and passed ID cards to Wash, Donut and Sarge. The four of them then set about freeing the rebels. Once every rebel was freed, Wash pushed himself to the front of the crowd and shouted over the din. “Listen up!”

Everyone fell silent.

“We’re obviously facing enemy resistance out there, and we have no weapons. So what we’re going to do is run. No one engages the enemy unless absolutely necessary.”

“We have ships waiting to take you guys home,” Carolina called. “Run for them. The Captains will be waiting for you. Just head straight for the ships and you should be fine.”

“Ready?”

There was a cheer of agreement.

“Let’s go.”

 

*

 

Wash limped more than he ran. His leg was still aching from the stab wound –courtesy of Locus – and it was making it hard to run. He limped his way across the warzone outside of the Federal base, the rebels surrounding him. Donut was at his side and Sarge was behind him. Carolina, armed and rearing for blood, had gone off to join the firefight that was kicking up the dust at Wash’s feet.

Six ships were circling close to the ground, shooting at the Feds. The Feds were shooting back, but they also had to deal with the advancing troops of rebels, all of whom were in tan armour that was lined with turquoise. Wash stole a glance at the rebels and almost came to a skidding stop when he saw that Lavernius Tucker was leading the rebels.

Tucker was at the head of the small army, sword in one hand and rifle in the other. He was unstoppable, slashing this way and that and occasionally stopping to shoot some poor Fed in the head. His armour was stained with blood that was not his own, and he seemed to be a blur of action. He was so fast and so skilled that Washington wasn’t sure it was Tucker for a second, believing it to be just some other man in turquoise armour. But an explosion blew Tucker’s helmet off, and Wash knew it was him when those dreadlocks and those two little scars at the corner of his mouth appeared.

Wash shook his head, forcing himself to concentrate. He noticed that the evacuation ships had landed, and desperately tried to shepherd the soldiers onto the ships. He managed to get them to section off into little groups, pushing them in the direction of ships that weren’t under fire from the Feds. When the last group was on board, he found that he, Sarge and Donut were the only three prisoners not on a ship.

“WASH!”

Carolina stood in the doorway to a Pelican, waving to them frantically. Wash set off at a run, pulling Donut along by his good wrist. Then, a Fed stepped out of nowhere and hit Wash in the jaw with the butt of his rifle.

Wash fell down, dazed and barely aware of the soldier’s demise at the hand of a well-aimed bullet from Carolina. Sarge was yanking him to his feet and pulling him along, Donut trailing behind with the soldier’s gun in hand. They were just approaching the Pelican, which was floating a little ways off the ground and was coming in to land, when the rocket hit one of the engines.

The heat of the blast was intense. The blast knocked the three of them off of their feet. Carolina fell back inside the Pelican, which was now spiralling out of control. It dived downwards and slammed into the ground not too far from Wash, exploding into a fireball the moment it slammed the ground.

Wash stared open-mouthed at the remains of the Pelican. He was sure he’d seen a green figure jump out of the Pelican as it started to fall, but he couldn’t be sure. For the time being, he assumed that Carolina had gone down with the Pelican, and that meant that she was dead.

“Move!” he shouted to Donut and Sarge, pulling them up.

“Where to?” Sarge asked. “The Pelicans are gone and the soldiers are retreating.”

The rebels were indeed falling back. Wash considered making a break for them, but there were dozens and dozens of Federal soldiers standing in the way, and they only had one clip in the rifle Donut held. Instead, he searched the body of a dead soldier, pulling a GPS and what looked like a communicator from the guy’s belt before his eyes landed on the treeline not too far away.

“Come on!” They set off at a run, heading straight for the trees. But Wash heard a shot, and Donut fell down next to him with a cry, blood already blossoming on the back of his shirt. Enraged, Wash scooped up Donut’s rifle and shot at the offending soldier, shooting bullet after bullet into him until there were only five left in the clip.

“We need to go,” Wash said, helping Sarge to pick up Donut.

They limped their way into the treeline, Wash keeping an eye out for any snipers or soldiers who’d love to take a shot at them. Thankfully, they managed to get miles and miles into the forest before they stopped, and that was only to see to the wound in Donut’s shoulder, which had bled horribly.

Donut was out cold, barely stirring as Wash and Sarge set him down on the forest floor and started to see to the messy bullet wound. Wash worked fast, using what little he’d learnt from his own experiences and from Doc to make a tourniquet and makeshift bandages. It wasn’t enough to stop the bleeding and he didn’t have anything to seal the wound, but it was a start.

While Sarge sat with Donut, Wash managed to get the GPS working. He sighed with relief when he saw just how far they were from the Federal base, but frowned when he realised how far they were from the canyon. It was well over three hundred miles away. Making it to the canyon was an impossible feat. It might’ve been probable, if all three of them had been in shape. But Donut was most likely on his death bed, Wash was limping and Sarge seemed to be on his last energy reserves.

Wash instead looked to the communicator, which actually turned out to be a recorder, making it useless. Groaning, he kicked out at a tree. He needed to get the Reds someplace safe, but the nearest safe place was hundreds of miles of forest and desert and mountains away. They were well and truly fucked.

“We have to go,” Sarge grunted, standing. “Try and get the transmitter in the GPS working, or try and convert the recorder into some sort of communicator.”

“I don’t think I can convert the recorder,” Wash said, pocketing said device. “But I’ll do my best with the GPS.”

 

*

 

Three days later, he had no luck whatsoever. The GPS remained as nothing more than a map. Donut drifted in and out of consciousness. They had no contact with the New Republic or the Feds. They just kept travelling down a river that would eventually run right by the canyon they’d crashed in, praying that someone friendly would find them.

The GPS’s transmitter was still busted, but Wash had figured out a way to transmit a signal by using a part from the recorder but there was something he wanted to record first. Something important.

So there he sat, on the root of a tree not too far away from the semi-comatose Donut and the snoring Sarge, turning the recorder over and over again in his hands. He watched the silvery moonlight make it shine and glimmer. He debated over what to say. He didn’t know whether or not to pour out all his feelings for Tucker, or to record his days of Project Freelancer, or ask for forgiveness for his sins.

Finally, he decided to talk about everything. So he raised the recorder up, pressed the little red ‘Record’ button, and said, “Journal entry… I don’t even remember what number I’m on now.

“Everything’s been moving too fast these last few weeks. We escaped from the Federal Army’s base, but now were stranded in the middle of nowhere with no way of contacting the New Republic. Donut’s wound is getting worse and Sarge is ready to drop. Carolina went down with the Pelican, and I don’t know if she survived.

“I’m losing hope at this point. Sarge and I are already prepared for the worst. Donut’s not doing good. We’ve done what we can to seal the wound, but he’s still losing blood. If we don’t do something soon, we’ll lose him.

“I’m doing what I can to get us to the New Republic’s base. I stole a GPS from a soldier back when we were busted out, but the transmitter inside is broken, meaning we can’t send our location to the New Republic so that they can pick us up. We should be making thirty miles a day, but we barely make five. We’re running out of food and water and we probably have around five bullets between us. If we’re attacked, we’re fucked.

“If I had known what I would be getting into ten years ago, I probably would’ve said no when I was reassigned. If I had known about Epsilon, about the Freelancers, the Director and the Meta and everything else I had to suffer through, I probably would’ve said ‘fuck you’ to those reassignment orders.

“Then again… If I had been told about North and Connie, Carolina and York, South, Maine, Wyoming, Tex, the Reds, Caboose, Church and… and Tucker, I probably would’ve still said yes, because all that suffering is worth spending time with all of them.

“But you don’t even know who they are. I guess… I guess I should start from the beginning.”

And so he did. He got everything off of his chest, from the day he joined Project Freelancer right up until barely ten minutes ago. As he talked, the weight that he didn’t realise had been on his heart lifted bit by bit, fracturing and flying away as he spoke about each individual even in his life. He confessed his wrongs, he shared his strife.

And he ended like so: “At this point, I just want to get the Reds home. They never deserved any of what’s happened to them. They’ve been tossed around and screwed over so many times I can’t believe they still have it in them to keep going. Donut’s not the goofy, optimistic guy I met at Valhalla any more. He’s not spoken since being shot. He just cries when he’s awake. And Sarge isn’t himself either. He doesn’t speak much either, just telling me to stop to drink or coaxing Donut into eating whatever berries aren’t poisonous.

“I need to get to the New Republic. And it’s not just for the Reds. It’s also for… Well, it’s for Tucker. I need to see him one more time before I finally give out. I want to tell him that I liked all his stupid pick-up lines. I want to return all the compliments to him. I want to tell him that… well, I _like_ him. And that I’m proud of him.

“So Tucker, if you’re listening to this, then you know now that I like you. And that the purpose of this recording was for you. I had a heavy weight – the weight of living – on my chest, and this recording helped me to get rid of it. Thank you.

“Journal entry over.”

 

*

 

He fixed the GPS’s transmitter. He transmitted the message, walking around for about two days with their location transmitting to whoever was nearby. He hoped it was the New Republic who was closest, and that it wouldn’t be the Feds who would come after them. Meanwhile, the little tape – his recording – sat in his pocket the whole time. He already had a plan: if the Feds found them, he’d let Sarge and Donut escape. He’d let them take the tape and the GPS and run for it whilst he took on the Feds. It’d give them a chance, and he could die knowing that he did his best to get them back.

So when the Feds started combing through the woods, looking for the three of them, Wash already had that idea in mind.

“No,” Sarge grunted, refusing to take the GPS.

“Sarge, this isn’t a request –“

“I know damn well what it is and I say no.”

“Sarge –“

“I’m not leaving you, son.”

“You don’t have a choice! You don’t know if the New Republic got the transmission, so you need the map!”

Right at that moment, a Pelican flew overhead, the symbol of the New Republic painted on the side. The Pelican circled over the area before coming to stop in a gap in the trees maybe five hundred feet away.

“You were saying?”

“Listen, you go and get Donut to them. The Fed will be all over them. I’ll draw them off.” Wash could already hear the shouts from the Feds, who were somewhere in the trees.

“Get yourself a communicator.”

“What?”

“Channel your inner thief and get a communicator off of one of ‘em Feds. We need some way to get hold of you again so that we can rescue you later.”

“Sarge –“

“Wash, this isn’t a request.”

Wash frowned down at the ground, before he sighed. “Fine. But, I need you to do something for me.” He dug into his pocket and drew out the small tape. “This is for Tucker. Well, it’s for anyone, but let Tucker listen first. If I don’t make it back –“

“Even though you will.”

“– _If_ I don’t, I want you guys to listen to it. I want _him_ to listen to it. It’s… It’s important.”

Sarge looked like he wanted to argue further, but the shouts of the Feds were getting louder so he took the tape, saluted Wash and took off in the direction of the Pelican. Wash, meanwhile, turned to face the trees with a smirk on his face and a rifle in hand.

_Time to cause chaos._

 

*

 

He only had five bullets, so he took out five guys. He moved so fast that they believed that there were rebels coming from all angles when it was just him, darting from tree to tree and taking out men as he did. He stole rounds from the bodies of other men, and managed to scavenge more equipment. He found himself a communicator, so he had that part of his mission sorted.

He lured the men away from the Pelican, subtly managing the manoeuvre the circle of Federal soldiers away from the Pelican clearing inch by inch. Crouched amongst the branches of a tree, he aimed at a nearby soldier and was about to shoot when a shot punctured the leaves around him. A shout later, a bullet went through his left hand, tearing a scream from him and sending him falling from the tree.

But he was up on his feet in an instant, his ‘old habits’ kicking in getting him to move ASAP. Project Freelancer taught him to always be on the ball, and he always was. The Feds followed him through the woods, whooping and cheering at they chased after him. But the cheers were cut short as the distant roar of a Pelican filled the air, punctuated only by a shout of, “IDIOTS!”

Wash ducked into a bush, blending in with the dark leaves as the Feds gathered in the small clearing with Locus, who was screaming and shouting about the soldiers letting the enemy ‘waltz away’. Wash was smiling at the spectacle until one poor soldier – a lad who’d tried to defend himself again Locus’s tirade of curses – was shot in the stomach and left for dead.

He snuck away after that.

 

*

 

“My name is Agent Washington, will anyone respond?”

He’d been trying all day with no luck. He’d been following the river deeper and deeper into the forest, desperately trying to get into contact with someone with the communicator. So far, all he’d had were bursts of static at random intervals. No one had responded to his call yet, and he doubted someone ever would.

Meanwhile, the forest floor was slowly turning to sand, and the trees were losing their leaves. Wash had managed to limp his way across a hundred miles in the few short days he’d been separated from Donut and Sarge, but he still had over one hundred miles to go, and most of those miles would be spent traversing mountains. He had no idea how he was going to make it with his fucked up leg, but he’d make it somehow.

Wash rubbed at his chest as he walked, frowning as the gashes on his chest throbbed. They’d been getting worse in the last few days, and he guessed he had some sort of infection. That thought pushed him to limp along faster.

The sun was hot overhead, and Wash found himself stopping for water breaks more than he should’ve done in the desert. Thankfully, the river ran right through the middle of the desert and lead him the way he was supposed to be going, so he could just follow it right up to the base of the snowy mountains.

His trek over the mountain went slower than his progress through the desert. Every few feet he had to stop and double over, his stomach churning and leg aching. He’d started to move away from the stream in favour of following the mountain path. The air was getting thinner and it was getting colder. And, to make things better, Washington saw a Federal Army airship fly overhead.

“Shit!” He flattened himself against the mountain wall, sliding behind one of the large boulders. The airship flew overhead, hovering directly above him for a few seconds before moving on. Another airship soon followed, and several more came after. Washington looked down at his communicator and swore loudly before crushing it against the boulder. He ripped out the transmitter from the GPS as well.

The patrols on the mountains made it difficult for Washington to get more than five feet without hearing the distant sound of a Pelican’s engines. He kept on moving, but eventually had to give up on the trail for fear of being found. He instead found himself at the top of a slope that would take him down to the river. He took a deep breath, thought of the Reds and Blues and jumped.

His leg was torn up before he’d gotten half way down. His left foot caught a rock on the way down and snapped sideways, causing him to scream. The edge of the slope came up faster than he’d expected, and he flew off of the edge and into the water. The river, which had looked so slow and lazy from the cliff, turned out to be faster than he could fight in the weakened state he was in. He went under and managed to kick himself back up to the surface again, but the river was too fast and too strong for him to fight.

He shouted out, calling for help from someone who didn’t exist. He went under again, his fingers clawing at the rocks at the bottom of the river until they were torn and bloody. His head popped up out of the water again and he turned, facing the way the river was running and suddenly wished he hadn’t. He clawed and clawed like an animal, shouting for help over and over again as he was swept along to the waterfall. His stomach dropped when he felt the rocky floor disappear.

And he was freefalling, twisting and turning in the air and screaming all the while. He hit the water hard and slammed against the rocks beneath, a stream of bubbles leaving his mouth as an intense pain erupted from the middle of his chest. He floated for a while, the pain fogging his mind before he tried to take a breath and inhaled water. So he kicked upwards and towards the bank, crawling onto the dirt and coughing up water. He collapsed on his back, sucking in small breaths due to the pain in his chest.

Fractured ribs. Maybe his sternum too. Just another part of his endless list of injuries. He groaned and pushed himself upright, wincing as another sharp splinter of pain ran up his chest. He stood and immediately doubled over again, his hand over his aching chest. He shifted his weight onto his right foot, unable to put anything onto his left as he’d snapped his ankle.

_Just give up,_ a voice in his head whispered. _Just lie down and die._ He snorted at the thought. Lying down and giving up was such an easy option at this point he actually fell down to his knees, ready to give it all up now. _What do you keep going for? If they wanted to find you, they would’ve come for you by now._ The signal, the messages he sent out, had obviously been picked up. And he’d kept on going until he was far into the mountains, constantly sending out his message, his pleas for someone to find him. The Feds had picked up the message and sent people out to find him. Surely the New Republic had as well.

He fell onto his side, his hand still over his chest and his breathing slowing. His eyes started to slide shut. _Give up. Just give up… What were you fighting for any way?_

And, without warning, the last memory of Tucker’s face – wide eyed and waiting for Wash to join him – pushed itself to the front of his mind. It filled him with new energy, made him stagger to his feet and push on into the woods. It dulled the pain of all his injuries, and helped him to keep on moving even when he felt like lying down once more to give up.

So he staggered his way back to the canyon in less than two days, finally collapsing against the console at the comm tower. He slid down against the front of it and smiled to himself. He thought about moving onto the tunnel where Tucker and the others had disappeared, but he remembered how he’d ordered Freckles to cause an earthquake. Speaking of Freckles, he’d passed the remains of the Mantis as he’d made his way to the comm tower. Seeing that had made Wash’s heart ache, and he thought of Caboose. He wondered how the Blue had been doing. Hopefully, Wash would find out soon.

He stood and leant against the comm tower console, pressing button after button as he worked to get the damn thing online. Finally, the screen came to life and he grinned, picking up the little walkie talkie attached to the side.

“This is Agent Washington, formerly of Project Freelancer,” he said, hoping that someone somewhere (friendly) was listening. “I am stranded in a canyon and have numerous injuries. My coordinates are -302, +636. I need help. Please respond.”

“This is Agent Washington and I need help. Please respond.”

“My name is David Washington, and I’m begging you for help.”

Still nothing.

“Is anyone listening?” He waited, and there was still no response. “Please…”

And just as he was about to give up, there was a sharp burst of static. He jumped, staring at the console in shock for a second before a voice – a woman’s voice – broke through the static. “ _Hello?_ ”

“Hello, yes! Can you hear me?”

“ _Hearing you loud and clear, Agent Washington. Today is your lucky day._ ”

“First one in years.”

“ _My name is Vanessa Kimball. I’m the leader of the New Republic. I have some friends here who want to speak to you.”_

“You don’t mean –“

“ _WASH!”_

Nine voices at once, making him jump out of his skin. He stood in shock for a moment before he registered that all of the Reds and Blues had shouted, and that he’d also heard Carolina’s and Epsilon’s voices. He’d even heard Doc, Sarge and Donut, and his heart lifted to know that the two Reds were alive and well.

“Guys?”

“ _Wash, where the hell are you?”_ It was Carolina this time, but he could still hear the others shouting in the background.

“I’m in the canyon, at the comm tower.”

“ _Good. We’re not too far away. We’ve been looking for you._ ”

“You have?”

“ _We got your transmission,_ ” Epsilon said. “ _We wanted to come up into the mountains but saw that the Feds were already there. Seems like everyone and their fucking mother got your damn transmission.”_

“Good.”

“ _What injuries do you have?_ ” Carolina asked.

“What?”

“ _You said that you had injuries. What injuries?”_

“Uh… Stab wound in the leg, cheekbone still broken, fingers still broken and may have set wrong. Fractured ribs – maybe sternum too – and a broken ankle. And I also have a nice set of gashes across my chest, courtesy of Locus.”

“ _Fucking hell, Wash,_ ” Carolina said. “ _How the fuck are you still going?_ ”

“I wanted to get back, make sure everyone was safe. And how the fuck did you get out? I saw that Pelican turn into a fireball.”

“ _Jumped out before it went up and made my way back here alone. Got back faster than you did at least._ ”

“ _We’re on our way, Washington,”_ Kimball said. “ _We should be there within a few minutes.”_

“Good. I’m dying for a good night’s sleep.”

“ _Hmph._ _Kimball out._ ”

“Washington out.”

Wash dumped the walkie onto the console and smiled up at the sky before the fist connected with the side of his head.

 

*

 

He fell down. He rolled onto his back, his hand going to where the fist had managed to split the skin of his temple just as the owner of the fist kicked out at him before lifting him up by the front. Wash groaned, clutching at the assailant’s wrist. His eyes focused and he groaned once more at the sight of Locus.

“Weeks and weeks, I’ve followed you,” Locus growled, throwing Wash back against the console. “Weeks, and now I get to tear away the rebels’ hope before they even get it back.”

Wash opened his mouth to make some snarky remark – probably something about Locus being slow if he’d been following an injured man for weeks before he finally caught up – but Locus’s knife went straight into his stomach. The question died on his lips, as well as the scream he’d had at the ready. Locus laughed at his wide-eyed, slacked mouth expression. Locus left the knife in Wash’s stomach and took a step back.

“This is the last time we’ll see each other, David. Goodbye.”

Locus turned and walked away.

Wash slid down from the console, his hand going to the new wound. Blood was already thick at his stomach, and the pain was intensifying by the second. He fell to his knees, one hand moving to yank the knife out. He shouted as he pulled it out and stared at it, at the bright red blood on the silver surface, before he tossed it aside. His hands were already shaking, and the edges of his vision were already darkening. But he forced himself to stand and lurch at the console, grabbing the walkie.

“Hello?”

“ _Wash?”_ Carolina asked, concern in her voice. “ _What is it?_ ”

“Locus was following me,” Wash slurred, sliding down the side of the console. “He was following me the whole time.”

“ _Wash what happened?”_

“I never knew the body had so much blood,” Wash said, looking at the scarlet liquid running down the front of his shirt and his pants. “I mean, there’s just so much.”

“ _Wash?_ ”

Wash froze, his hand trembling. “Tucker?”

“ _Wash… W-What’s happened? Are you hurt?_ ”

“Locus got to me. He wanted to finish the job himself.

“ _We’re on our way Wash, just stay awake._ ”

“Did you get my tape, Tucker?”

There was a pause, and the sound of Tucker breathing heavily for a few seconds. “ _Y-Yeah. I did. And I listened to it the whole way through.”_

“At least now I can die knowing that you know how I feel.”

“ _You are not going to die!_ ”

“ _Washington, we’re less than half a minute away,_ ” Kimball said. “ _Just hang on. We have medics aboard that can help you._ ”

“I actually wish you guys would just leave me,” Wash mumbled, his eyes on the sky. His hand was across his stomach, pressing against his wound in a feeble attempt to stop the bleeding. “Without the amount of shit I put you guys through, the amount of shit I’ve done in my life… What better way to end it than by how I’ve ended so many others’ lives.”

“ _Stop talking like that,_ ” Tucker snapped. _“We’re coming to save your ass._ ”

Wash didn’t have the energy to respond anymore. He let the walkie fall from his hands, ignoring Tucker’s shouts and the shouts of others in the background. He didn’t listen to the distant sound of Pelican engines. Instead, he let his head fall back and didn’t move, ready to fall into the dark abyss.

But the engine sounds grew louder, and there were hands on his arms, his wound, his face. His eyes opened blearily, and he managed a weak smile at the sight of Tucker, helping to stop the bleeding.

“Stay awake, Wash,” Tucker growled as Wash was pulled onto a stretcher.

“No guarantees,” Wash mumbled.

Before he went under, Tucker slipped his hand into Wash’s.

 

*

 

Tucker didn’t know how long he’d been sat by Washington’s bed, clutching at the agent’s cold hand. After Wash had come out of surgery, Tucker had gone straight to his bedside. He was only pried away so that he could eat and shower and sleep; other than that, he sat by Wash’s side day and night. He figured during his current shift, he’d been sat there for twelve hours straight. Grif and Simmons had sat with him for a while, and Caboose had wandered up for a while before Tucker was left alone again.

It was dark outside. The clock at Wash’s bedside read 11:35pm. Three days after Wash got back, the nurses officially stopped trying to kick Tucker out, since he’d always find a way to get back to Wash’s side. It was a month since Wash had gotten back, and he’d never once opened his eyes.

Tucker turned the tape over in his hands. Sarge had pressed it into his hands moments after he got back, saying that it was from Wash. And Tucker, desperate to listen to it, had immediately ran up to his quarters and listened. So he sat there and listened to the four hour recording, listening to Wash recount everything that had happened to him in his thirty miserable years alive. His opinion on Wash – as well as Carolina and several others – was changed forever. He didn’t see Wash as some paranoid, ex-special ops guy with a tendency to look over his shoulder anymore; he saw a man who’d been beaten down so many times that it was a wonder he managed to stand back up. Tucker could suddenly understand why Wash had been so persistent with the training back at the canyon. The guy had been so underprepared and had lost so much that he just wanted to be ready for a change.

And then Wash had confessed to liking him. Wash had been able to say it, and Tucker hated himself for not saying it over the radio. He hated himself for never saying it sooner. He now ran the risk of Wash never waking up, meaning he’d never get a chance to tell Wash he felt the same way.

He shifted his seat further up so that he was sat by Wash’s head. The agent still had to use a respirator to breath. Turns out he had fractured his sternum as well as his ribs. At the foot of his bed, there was a list of injuries he’d had when he’d arrived. Tucker had to turn the list over so that he couldn’t see it, feeling ill at the sight of so many listed ailments. A fractured sternum was one of the least of Wash’s problems. The worst had been the gaping hole in his stomach. The doctors had had to advertise that everyone with Wash’s blood type – type O – had to come up to the medical bay ASAP to donate. Tucker, who had the same blood type, had been at the front of the queue.

Tucker wiped at his itching eyes. He wanted to put his head down for a few minutes, but Wash could wake up at any moment, and Tucker wanted to be there when he did. He had so many things to say to the agent, each as important as the last. There were several places where he could start, and he was having a hard time choosing which to pick. He _did,_ however, manage to narrow his options down to three: “Don’t ever do that again” or “You’re a moron” or just straight up kiss the dude.

Personally, Tucker was leaning towards the third option.

“How’s he doing?”

Felix stood in the doorway, out of his armour and in his civilian clothes. He walked into the room and pulled up a chair at the other side of Wash’s bed. Felix looked how Tucker felt: tired, annoyed and worried, all at the same time. Felix’s hair was growing out, falling down into his eyes, and the merc brushed it back irritably.

“Same as he was yesterday,” Tucker said, his voice hoarse from being used scarcely in the last few days. “He’s sleeping on.”

“He’ll wake up. Eventually.”

“But how long will that be?”

“Few weeks. Few months. Few years. Never?”

Tucker sighed.

“All you gotta do is just wait, Tucker. He _will_ wake up. From what I’ve heard from the others, he’s one tough mother fucker. Plus, he fought his way back. I doubt he’s gonna let this hinder him.”

Tucker stared at his hands for a few moments. “Got any leads on Locus?”

The rebels had been tracking the mercenary relentlessly in the last few weeks, trying to get any kind of lead on the guy. But he’d vanished off the radar completely, and that infuriated Tucker, because there were a hundred different conversations that he wanted to have with Locus, one in particular starting with a bullet through the guy’s head.

“Nothing,” Felix said, playing with his dog tags. “We’re doing what we can, but Locus was always good at hiding. He’s probably bunkered down somewhere, thinking he’s won. Didn’t count on us being there so quick, did he?”

“I can’t believe what he did to them.”

“To who?”

“To the rebels. To Donut and Sarge. To _Wash._ Jesus Christ, he carved the word ‘Traitor’ into Wash’s chest!”

“He was always a sick son of a bitch,” Felix spat, glaring at the floor. “He’s called me up a few times and read off the dog tags of rebels he’s killed.”

“What?”

“And he laughs the whole time.”

“He’s a nutbag.”

“He always was.”

“Did you know him before all of this?”

Felix nodded. “We used to be best friends. Met in high school. He thought I was interesting, since I’d moved from Earth to Chorus.”

“You lived on Earth?”

“I’m Korean, remember?”

“Ah, yeah.”

“Anyway, we were best friends. We joined the military and went through basic training together. And then, during the war, he changed. He saw some shit and turned on the UNSC. And when they completely forgot about Chorus and let it fall into the shit state it’s in now, he hated them all the more. And he hated me for trying to reasonable, for trying to say that they had bigger things to deal with than a relatively small scale war on some planet on the outer regions of colonized space.”

“War does shit to people, dude. Wash is an example.”

“Is that what was on that tape?”

Tucker looked down at the little tape in his hands and sighed. “Yeah. It was his whole life story. Something about the ‘heavy weight of living’ and that he needed to get everything off of his chest.”

Felix smiled. “’The weight of living’, huh? Reminds me of some old Earth song. But he’s got a point. Sometimes, things get too heavy when you carry them around. Pouring your heart out to someone is the best way to get things off of your chest.” Felix studied Tucker for a moment before saying, “Maybe you should speak up sometimes. Ever since you got here, you’ve been… subdued. You keep to yourself. I didn’t think anything of it until Caboose got upset that you’ve changed.”

Tucker sighed and wiped his eyes again. “I was just worried about Wash and the others. Wash tried so hard to get us ready for anything and I threw it all back in his face. From the sounds of it, he’s had the shittiest of lives and I made it all the more difficult. And even after everything I said to him – all the insults and the name calling – he still found it in him to help me. And he said that he was proud of me. And now he’s lying here, almost dead, and I can’t tell him just how much I like him and life in general fucking sucks.”

Felix was smiling sadly as Tucker broke down into tears. “And there’s your weight gone. Feel better?”

“Surprisingly, I do.”

 

*

 

It was another two days before Wash opened his eyes.

It was a day off for the troops, and the Reds, Blues, Felix, Carolina and even Kimball found themselves squashed into Wash’s room. Tucker sat at his usual spot, gripping Wash’s limp fingers tight. Caboose sat beside him, playing absent mindedly with his helmet and chatting amiably with Church, who’d once again been implanted into Carolina’s armour after his body was destroyed in a mission gone wrong. Kimball and Felix stood off by the door, chatting in undertones whilst the Reds and Doc argued at the foot of Wash’s bed.

Tucker was staring out of the window at the canyon below, where he could see soldiers still training and Pelicans coming and going as they pleased, when he felt Wash’s fingers twitch. He froze, his eyes going to the hand he was holding just as Wash’s fingers twitched again. And then, Wash’s once non-existent grip tightened, his thumb running over Tucker’s fingers. Tucker looked up at Wash’s face and shouted out when he saw that Wash’s eyes were fluttering open.

Everyone immediately swarmed around the bed, falling silent as Wash opened his steel grey eyes and stared at the ceiling. He blinked twice and his free hand went to the respirator at his mouth, trying to pry it off. Doc’s hands were slapping Wash’s away in an instant, frowning down at the agent.

“I don’t think so,” Doc said. “Your lung was punctured when you broke a rib. You’ll be leaving that on.”

Wash frowned at Doc as if he didn’t know who he was before he struggled to sit up. His eyes darted from person to person until they finally landed on Tucker, who was smiling. Wash managed a weak smile before pulling the respirator away from his mouth, ignoring Doc’s concerns, and saying, in a raspy voice, “What’s with the family gathering?”

“I’d better go inform the nurses that he’s awake,” Kimball said with a smile as Caboose started to jump up and down happily. Kimball left the room and the Reds and Blues immediately started talking, shouting a hundred things at once.

“Dude, you’re an idiot for doing that –“

“I don’t know how you managed it, but you did –“

“An absolute moron –“

“Glad to see you’re awake –“

All of them shut up, however, when Tucker leaned forwards and pressed a kiss to Wash’s lips in front of the lot of them. Wash’s freckled cheeks were bright red when Tucker pulled back.

“About damn time,” Sarge grumbled.

 

*

 

Later that day, the Reds, Blues, Felix and the others were ushered out. Only Tucker stayed in with Wash, who was propped up on his pillows. The doctors let Wash take the respirator off, saying that the worst had passed. So the two Blues sat together, just savouring the silence and clutching each other’s hand like a lifeline.

And Tucker finally placed the tape on the bed next to their hands and said, “I listened to the whole thing.”

“Then you know everything.”

“Apart from why you made it.”

Wash sighed through his nose. “I just needed to get everything off of my chest. Sometimes things get too heavy.”

“Those ‘things’ being ‘the weight of living’?”

Wash just smiled.

“That’s a lot of shit to get off your chest.”

“At least now you know the whole story. But I don’t know your story yet.”

“I don’t have much of one.”

“Liar.”

“Seriously, I don’t have some huge ‘weight of living’ like you do.”

“Every person does. Being guilty is part of being human.”

“And what’s giving up your weight part of being?”

“It’s part of trust.”

Tucker stared at their intertwined fingers.

“I trust you, Tucker. Do you trust me?”

“Of course I do,” Tucker said, rubbing his thumb across the back of Wash’s hand.

“Then tell me.”

They lapsed into silence again before the corners of Tucker’s mouth quirked.

 

*

 

“ _Journal entry 151._

_“I’d like to say a few words about something I’ve been thinking a lot on over the last few days, and that something is the weight of living. It sounds like such a pretentious idea, but it has me thinking a lot. It has me thinking about how we humans carry the things that we do forever. We remember something we’ve done from years before and inwardly shiver. We think on it for months at a time, thinking about how we could’ve done it differently or avoided the humiliation. We carry that guilt with us for the rest of our lives._

_“But we only carry that guilt with us if we force ourselves to hold on. We just need to find something that helps us to let go, helps us to move on and become a new person. And for me, that something came in the form of Lavernius Tucker._

_“He is what drove me into recording everything I’d done, relieving me of my own weight, and he shared his with me. We let them go, and moved on to be new people. There are some things you can never truly let go of, never truly forget, but having someone who knows what you went through can help you to overcome these barriers. They can share this weight with you, and they can eventually help you to cast it off._

_“And I’ve finally managed to shake mine off and become a different person._

_“David Washington, signing off for the last time.”_

**Author's Note:**

> i really lost my verve after the first paragraph and this sucks anus but i hoped you liked it (even though i hated it and it has no plot but there you go)


End file.
